


Myself Am Hell

by barbaricyawp



Series: In Hell I'll Be in Good Company [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Fingering, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Body Modification, Edgeplay, Electrocution, Erotic Electrostimulation, Forced Orgasm, Frottage, HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Past Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Slow Burn, thigh riding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-07-24 00:09:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16169576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbaricyawp/pseuds/barbaricyawp
Summary: Bucky and Steve recover after the events of "Face God into Hell."





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

“Which way I fly is hell;  _myself_  am hell;  
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,  
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,  
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.”

-John Milton, _Paradise Lost_

* * *

 

Bucky awakes to an unfamiliar setting. A tent unlike any he’s ever been in. No, not quite a tent, but a small house. A clay dwelling. It’s warm here, warmer than it should be in…

In…

Where the hell are they?

His brain stutters. Memory is a complicated task that Bucky can’t remember the steps to. He realizes that he can’t remember where they are or how they got here. Can’t remember what happened yesterday or the day before. Dread settles heavy in his stomach.

Sergeant Bucky Barnes never forgets _anything._ He can remember lines and lines of access codes, longitudes and latitudes, complex strategy. He can remember addresses years after he needs them. He can remember what Steve ate for _breakfast_ last year for Christ’s sake.

Steve.

Where is Steve?

Bucky gets up off the floor and rips open the colorful blanket that serves as a door. Outside, he is astounded by the bright sun setting, by the view of a crystal lake backdropped by mountains. It’s gorgeous, unlike anything that Bucky has ever seen. Anything that Bucky can _remember_ seeing. But this isn’t the time for scenery.

There are three huts alongside the one that Bucky woke up in. He moves silently toward the first, drawing aside the curtain only enough to peek inside. Empty.

He moves to check the second and finds children inside. Young children, no older than Bucky’s youngest sister. Well that’s just fucking great. Civilians. Once he finds Steve, they’ll have to evacuate them first.

The children don’t notice the curtain parting, don’t notice Bucky skulking around; they’ve got their focus on some piece of technology that Bucky doesn’t recognize. He closes the curtain and moves to the final dwelling.

At the doorway, he hears talking. A man and a woman whose conversation is slowly gaining volume. They’re arguing in English, cutting each other off at each sentence.

“We have to reason with him, Natasha. I know you don’t want to, but—”

“Rogers is a big boy,” the woman, Natasha, replies. Bucky’s heart soars; Steve is here somewhere. “He doesn’t need to—”

“He _does_ need to. Did you see Barnes in the van? On the plane?” 

“Yeah, and now that you mention it, you never thanked me for saving your life either time, Sam.”

Sam laughs, but it's not a wholly happy sound. More like a sardonic bark. “All I’m saying is that man isn’t in there anymore. There are some people you just can’t save.”

Footsteps crunch round the back of the hut, more Nazis perhaps, and Bucky circles around to catch the guy by the mouth, silencing him.

But he’s surprised to find that he’s caught Steve himself, carrying three cups of coffee in one hand. Bucky releases him immediately, only to pull him back into a quick embrace.

“Thank God,” he whispers to his ear. “You’re alive.”

“Bucky?” Steve says at full volume.

Bucky leans back and clamps his hand over Steve’s mouth again, hushing him. Hot coffee sloshes over Bucky’s front, but he remains silent. “Nazis,” he explains, nodding towards the cabin. “Two of them. But we can take them, c’mon.”

“Bucky…” Steve says again, trepidation filling his tone.

Why the hell isn’t he listening? Didn’t he hear? They are in _Nazi territory_ and Steve Rogers is carrying coffee…

Coffee. Why is he carrying coffee? Bucky senses another gap, something else that he's missing and just can't quite grasp onto. He tries to force his brain into remembrance, but there's only white. An absence as big as memory itself.

“Bucky,” Steve says again, “those aren’t Nazis. Do you…” Steve swallows dryly. “Do you think we’re at war, Buck?”

“We _are_ at war, Steve."

Steve shakes his head. "No, no, Buck. We aren't. At least not--"

"What are you _talking_ about—” Bucky reaches out to shake him by both shoulders. But only one hand comes up. Full of unnameable dread, he looks to his left arm to see what’s wrong.

The ground tilts at an angle. The air changes pressure in his ears. His arm is gone. Just fucking _gone._

On strange instinct, Bucky tries to curl his fingers, his missing fingers. He hears something whirring in his shoulder, almost mechanical. They’ve bandaged the stump of his shoulder—oh god, his shoulder is a _stump—_ but Bucky rips the bandages off.

“Don’t,” Steve says, grabbing him by the wrist, keeping him from completely exposing the wound. The coffee in his hand has crashed to the ground, black coffee pools at their feet. Bucky's feet are bare. “Let’s go back inside where we can talk.”

The two agents in the hut have emerged, looking concerned. They hover nearby, and both have guns in their holsters. Steve lied; of course they’re at war. They’re at war right now.

Bucky rips his hand from Steve’s. His heartbeat is a physical pressure against his ribcage. He can feel his pulse in his neck, choking him. Everything is choking him. When he rips away the bandages, there is a metal cap over his shoulder socket. Bucky gingerly touches where metal meets skin and finds that his eyes are misting. The skin is healed over the metal. This happened a long time ago. He lost his arm a long time ago.

And Steve _knew_ about it.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to explain things. It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” Steve is explaining in a rush. “You weren’t supposed to wake up alone.”

“He wasn’t supposed to wake up at all,” Sam murmurs to Natasha, perhaps thinking that Bucky can’t hear him.

Bucky may only have one arm, but he sure as hell has two ears. He lunges for the man’s gun and aims it at the woman, Natasha. Instinct tells him that, despite her petite stature, she’s the biggest threat of the two of them.

“Bucky!” Steve cries out in alarm. “Don’t, those are my…they’re _friends_ , Buck!”

“Don’t worry, Steve." Bucky says. Clearly he's been compromised, brainwashed perhaps. "I’m gonna get us out of here.” 

It’s a strange gun in Bucky’s hand, unlike any army issued weapon he’s ever encountered. He fumbles with the safety, and that gives Natasha enough time to draw her own gun. She holds it steady, the look on her face thoroughly unamused.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she says calmly. “Lower your weapon. I don’t want to hurt you.”

That seems unlikely, given that the gun is aimed dead at his heart. Bucky flicks off the safety. He aims for her forehead.

Natasha fires her gun before he can, shooting him twice in the chest. The pain that stings there isn’t consistent with bullet wounds. _Tranq darts,_ Bucky thinks, slipping under. He’s on the ground, but can’t remember the fall. 

Steve crouches over him, holding his head out of the dirt. He’s shouting something at him, but Bucky can’t register this. His head is full of fog.

“Told you we were at war,” he might say. Or he might just pass out into the black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just when you thought you were safe from HYDRA trash. Mind the tags and beware graphic sexual violence.

* * *

“The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.” 

-Dante Alighieri,  _The Divine Comedy_

* * *

 

The year is 1947 and Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is barely holding on. He cannot remember his exact age. He cannot remember what home felt like. What he can remember is his name and his number. And Steve Rogers. He’ll always remember Steve Rogers

One of the Soviets approaches the cell, says something in Russian and shoves a tray of food under the grate. They’ve been lacing his food with drugs—hallucinogens and sedatives—to make him compliant. He fell for it once and won’t again.

Bucky keeps track of time through the meals that he’s refused. He’s on his eighth refused meal, and he receives two meals a day, so he stopped eating and drinking four days ago. His hunger is a gnawing knot in his stomach, eating all his other organs. But Bucky survived the fall, he can survive this too.

He just has to hold out for Steve.

The Soviet prison guard returns, sees Bucky’s full tray and shouts at him. His face turns red as he gesticulates wildly to the tray, repeating the same phrase over and over again. Small men with small amounts of power drive Bucky nuts.

“More Russian,” Bucky grumbles at him. “I don’t fucking understand Russian.”

The guard leaves and Bucky slumps back against the concrete wall of his cell. They’ve moved him only twice since he got here however many years ago. His first cell had a window, or at least a gap in the wall to let the sun in. But when he started carving at the rocks to widen the hole, they moved him.

This cell has no light, save the dim and constant light from the corridors. Instead of a proper door, he has a grate. When he was first moved into this cell, his arm wouldn’t fit through the narrow bars of the grate. Now he’s lost so much weight, it slips right through.

Bucky is seeing how far he can get his left arm through the grate (he can fit it in up to his shoulder) when two Soviets come marching down the hall, the prison guard in tow. Both of them are dressed in lab coats. Doctors. 

Though he knows it’s futile, Bucky scuttles to the back part of the cell. When they try to haul him back out again, he fights. And he fights hard. He sinks his teeth into someone’s forearm. He breaks another's nose with the back of his head and blood trickles through his hair.

But it’s not enough. They call for reinforcements, so many of them that Bucky's a little flattered, and he’s forcibly dragged down the corridor into a medical room. He’s strapped down to the table still screaming and swearing. There, they stuff a fat feeding tube through his nose. Sludge runs through it and down the back of his throat. The burning pressure against his sinuses is agony, but what’s worse is the muggy feeling of the drugs working through his body.

They leave him strapped to the table like that, feeding tube still in.

\---

Despite the discomfort, Bucky drifts. The drugs have his limbs feeling light and easy, as if they aren’t a part of his body at all. The patterns of light against his eyelids spin in easy circles. This is the first time that he's felt calm since he arrived in this Soviet hellscape. He drifts like this, in a haze of drugs.

Until the cell door opens.

Bucky tries to move his head up, but finds his neck muscles are unresponsive. His body still feels connected to him, but as if it's far away. When he tries to move it, his head lolls to the side. The doctors in lab coats are back, just the two of them this time, conferring in murmured Russian. Bucky drops his head back and stares up at the ceiling. There’s a ceiling fan up there, whirring at top speed. The _whump_ _whump_ _whump_ sets the pace of his rushing heart.

They connect him to some electrodes at the temples and along the major muscles of his arms and torso.

He loses himself in the haze again, awash in the soft whispers of another language and the haze of whatever Soviet serum shit they've put in him this time. But his eyes fly open when he feels the chill of a scalpel slicing open his trousers. Bucky kicks against them, but his thighs only twitch. The doctors laugh, shushing each other instantly.

They have the air of people about to commit a crime, even by their standards. When one of them goes to lock the door, Bucky's stomach clenches. This hasn’t been authorized. Whatever they’re about to do to him will be a secret. A secret even to other Soviets.

This is bad. Really bad.

They attach electrodes to the insides of his naked thighs and in the hollows of his hips. When they turn the electricity on, the buzz isn’t wholly unpleasant. But the constant current makes every muscle in his body tense and flex.

They turn off the electricity, recording whatever information they gathered from that. Then, they readjust the electrodes and turn the electricity back on. This time, the buzz is more intense and what's worse… _fuck._

He can't even see straight.

And what's _fucking_ worse is that Bucky can feel that electricity creep in sneaking tendrils up his thighs and settle in a hot pool at the pit of his stomach. It's a dark sickening feeling, one that he doesn't want to own up to. One that he doesn't want to be a part of or host in his  _own fucking body._  But he cannot deny it. He’s getting hard.

The doctors laugh again, cruel in their delight over his predicament. The heat in his stomach worsens, coiling up into a tight pressure seizing his whole body. Bucky tucks his face into his shoulder, breathing slowly and deeply. There’s a way out of this. He just hasn’t figured it out yet. 

They’ve left the scalpel on a wheeled cart, a few feet out of Bucky’s reach. He focuses on that scalpel now, the only weapon in the room. He focuses on it even as he feels a hand wrap around his erection, feels the cool slide of gel sluice over his hole. The feeling is oily and uncomfortable. Bucky tries to squirm, but finds his body won't let him. He lies perfectly still on the examining table, feeling thoroughly examined.

Fingers probe inside him while another hand strokes slowly over him. He inhales deeply and splutters on the feeding tube in his nose. He gags on it, throat convulsing around the sludge. For a moment, he thinks he might suffocate. Thinks he might prefer suffocating. He loses focus on the scalpel for a moment, just a moment, and the horror of the situation rushes through him.

“Shh,” one of the doctors says, murmuring more Russian. He guides the feeding tube out of Bucky’s nose and he gulps down air gratefully.

The fingers dig deeper inside of Bucky.

“Don’t think you’ll find much in there,” Bucky gasps. They don’t respond; they don’t speak English.

Then, the fingers curl up and his knuckles brush something sensitive inside of Bucky. Something that makes his whole body spasm. Something that makes him feel a dangerous kind of good, the kind of good that hurts.

Precum blurts from Bucky’s cock, and he is blushing so hard his entire body might ignite into flames. Combustion itself seems tempting. He’s never been touched there before, has never been seen this way before.

It’s awful. And if he gets out of this alive, he’ll never tease a girl just to see her blush again.

The doctors aren’t letting up though. The electricity has been increasing slowly until each of Bucky’s muscles twitch and spasm, even those that clench around the doctor’s fingers. He hasn’t let up on that sensitive spot, rubbing it in maddeningly slow circles. He can't keep track of the doctor's hands, can't tell who is causing what sensation and where. They seem to be everywhere. They feel everywhere.

Lightening jumps down Bucky's spine when one of the doctors presses three fingers into a point against his prostrate. Despite the lethargy of the drugs, Bucky’s hips leap up off the table. Both doctors still at the sudden motion, waiting to see what he’ll do next.

Whatever it is that ignited his muscles to jerk him like that, it's long gone now. Bucky just twitches on the table. There’s sweat pooling on his forehead, dripping down into his ears and along the column of his throat. He can’t tell if his body is in agony or ecstasy, or if it’s possible to feel both.

 “We don't do it like this back in the U.S. of A,” he jokes weakly, gasping. He doesn't know who the joke is for. It's barely for himself.

The doctors relax, happily conversing with each other again. They redouble their efforts, focusing on his body with new curiosity. Bucky can imagine that they are marveling over how responsive he is, how easy it was for them to get him going for them. How easily he seems to open up for the fingers. They might even wonder if anyone has been inside Bucky before, that’s how easily he’s taking it. There is so much shame in being seen like this. 

Bucky desperately doesn’t want to come, doesn’t want to give them anything more than they’ve already taken from him. Tears are gathering at the corners of his eyes from the exertion of holding off orgasm. But he's achingly hard, embarrassingly hard. His hips are now jerking up without his control. And his cock is leaking a steady stream of precum. The doctors don’t seem to be interested in making him come so much as seeing how long they can keep him like this. Suspended.

Each stroke of the doctor’s hand is both too much and nowhere near enough. Each curl of his fingers is agony so sweet that Bucky could die. Would rather die than come for them. He will not come for them.

They’re speaking to him in Russian again, low hushed tones as if soothing a startled horse. Bucky is horrified to find that it almost works; he almost wants to please them and let himself feel pleasure. It's been so damn long since he felt anything good. Anything human. With each stroke of the hand, Bucky finds his hips twitching up, finds himself grinding down on the fingers inside him.

The doctors turn the electricity up and it pulses through him, straight to his cock. He can't help it. He comes, sobbing and fighting it all the way. He feels as if he’s being dragged down by a current. Feels as if he’s burning alive.

When he’s gone through the aftershocks of his orgasm, and the electricity is no longer running through him, one of the Soviet doctors strokes over his cheek. He’s speaking Russian to him, voice pleased as if he’s being praised.

The other doctor pushes his fingers into Bucky’s mouth, stroking along the ridge of his teeth, pulling at the edges of his lips. He's aiming to humiliate him, observing his mouth like this. So Bucky waits until he has all four fingers jammed into his mouth to bite down. He tastes the spurt of blood in his mouth and clamps down harder on the bone.

The doctor is screaming now, yanking at his hand in desperation. But Bucky won’t release him until he hears each bone crunch and pop. As easy as biting down on a carrot. Bucky lets the fingers drop out his mouth and onto the table as the doctors run for help. He chuckles to himself; he has to get his kicks from somewhere. 

Now he just waits for the Soviets to drag him off to the electric chair like a toddler to time out. 

"Any time now, Steve," he says up to the ceiling. "You can come get me any old time now."


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

“Let us be thankful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.”

-Hebrews 12:28

* * *

 

 

Steve has led him into a cell, but he calls it a hospital room. It’s different than any cell or maintenance room that the asset has encountered. There are floor to ceiling windows that look over the mountains and plains. The machines are sophisticated and brand new. The room is bright and clean and friendly. He instinctively trusts none of it.

“What country are we in?” He asks Steve. Every time he talks his voice sounds weird to his own ears. As if someone else lives in his mouth and speaks for him. “I don’t recognize it.”

“It’s an isolationist country called Wakanda,” Steve says, helping him climb onto the medical table. “It’s in Africa.”

The medical table is cushioned and covered in clean paper. He has trouble getting on it with his one arm. As he shifts his weight onto it, the paper rips. He looks up to Steve, reflexively expecting punishment. It never comes. 

“Why are we here?” 

“We’re not safe in America,” Steve says. He has the tone of someone who is explaining something that’s been explained several times over.

He shakes his head. “No, I meant in this…” It’s not a cell. “Room.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Your shoulder socket is infected. We’re going to get a doctor to look at it.”

He eyes the white MRI machine dubiously. When he turns his head to raise a brow at Steve, he panic laughs.

“Okay, yeah. You got me. They also want to look at your head again. But only if you’re comfortable with that. I told them we'd see how you felt.” Steve has the air of someone throwing answers at a teacher until he gets the right one. It's endearing, but not exactly comforting.

He looks back to the MRI machine, curling and uncurling his fingers into a fist. He’s not comfortable with the machine. He’s not comfortable at all.

Last night he had a dream about the Soviets. Last night he was Bucky Barnes, brave and brazen and brash with each decision. Fuck the costs. Today, he’s not that man. He’s not any man, but Steve’s timid shadow. It’s humiliating, being this afraid, and he can’t let Steve know.

He shrugs. “I don’t mind a quick snooze in the box.” He says it because it sounds like something Bucky Barnes would say. Sounds like something he wants to say. 

Steve’s eyes are on his tensely fisted hand, but he doesn’t question it. Bless Steve, he always knows when to make room for the big hurts.

A doctor comes in and he finds himself casting a look to Steve, looking for reassurance. She’s a young woman, her torso probably slimmer than his own thigh, but his fingers still tremble at the sight of her. At her white lab coat.

Steve is watching him back. He follows the line of his sight, looks back to his expression, and pieces it together. “Doctor,” he says politely, “Could you take off the lab coat?”

“Not a problem, Captain,” she says in the light, bouncing lilt that most people speak with here. He finds the accent strange, but somehow soothing in its unfamiliarity. She takes off the lab coat and tucks it into a drawer.

That’s a little better.

She goes to take off the bandages, but Steve extends an arm to block her. Not aggressive, just assertive, as Steve often is. “You okay with the doctor getting a look at that shoulder? Okay if she touches you?” 

Now, he remembers another time Steve took him to the doctor. Same country, same room. Different doctor. That doctor had touched his shoulder without asking, without giving a warning and he’d thrown the doctor clear across the room and into a window. The window had cracked with the force of his body.

He doesn’t know what happened to that doctor. If he was alright. If he survived.

At the thought of a doctor prodding her fingers into his gaping socket, exploring inside him, he flinches. Moreover, he doesn’t want to hurt the doctor. He hates lying on a medical table more than anything, but nods towards the MRI machine.

“Can we get that over with first?”

Steve looks apprehensive, but the doctor chirps, “Absolutely, Sergeant Barnes."

Getting onto the table is harder than he anticipated. He needs to take a few deep breaths and when he lies down, he finds himself checking his exits. 1. The door they came in. 2. The window could be broken. 3. The vents up near the ceiling can be crawled through. Knowing he has at least a few routes to escape gives him enough to lie still on the table while it feeds him into the machine. 

“Doing great, Buck,” Steve says outside the machine.

“Hold very still,” the doctor reminds. “You’re going to hear some sounds in there, but it’s all normal. Alright?” 

He doesn’t respond verbally, his teeth are glued together, but makes a thumbs up. They turn on the machine.

MRIs click. They all do, it's just how they work. It’s a close sound, but not one that triggers immediate panic in his blood. What bothers him is that part of his body remains outside of the machine. Exposed.

Steve won’t let anything happen to him. Steve won’t let the doctor touch him without asking. Steve won’t let anything happen to him.

But they can both look at him. They can both look at him as much as they want. All of him. Any of him. The long length of his exposed legs and flat torso. What's between his legs. If the doctor wanted, she could—

“You okay in there, Buck?”

He’s breathing hard now. Are they alone in this room? Did more people enter? Can they trust this doctor? The vents in this room are blasting conditioned air through a fan. _Whump whump whump._

They’re going to touch him, he just knows it. They’re going to get their hands inside him and _touch_ him.

The gradient coils in the MRI machine are still jackhammering away and, while the clicking noise didn’t bother him before, the sound is now overwhelming. He can't trace the source of any sound. Not the clicking, not the _whump whumping,_ not his own heartbeat. He sits up suddenly, head hitting the top of the machine hard enough to light stars in his vision.

“Turn it off!” he can hear Steve ordering the doctor.

He’s confused now. Not certain why he’s trapped in this tube, what he did to displease Steve and deserve this punishment. But he’ll make it up to him. 

His arm flies up, hard enough to dent the machine’s opening and let him crawl out. Steve sees the wild confusion in his eyes.

“Run,” Steve tells the doctor. “Get Agent Romanoff.”

The doctor makes a run for the door. The asset rips off a chunk of the machine and hurls it at her. Doesn’t know why, just does it. She screams, ducking and barely dodging it. The asset advances toward her.

“Soldier,” Steve says in his sternest captain’s voice. “Stand down.” 

The asset pauses. Steve is his captain, and the asset is trained to obey the captain at all costs. Fine then. He stops and stands at attention, watches the doctor slips out the door.

“She’s getting away,” he informs the captain helpfully.

“Yeah, Buck.” The captain rubs his face. He looks and sounds strained. “I know.”

 

\---

The asset follows the captain back to his room. The asset has his own room, connected to Captain Rogers’, but doesn’t always sleep in it. Sometimes the asset doesn't sleep at all.

Now, Captain Rogers guides the asset into his own room and stands in the door frame. “Can you wait in your room for a bit?”

The asset nods. “I can, sir.” 

“Okay. Stay here, Soldier.” He pauses and, though it seems to pain him, demands, “That’s an order.”

As far as orders go, this one is exceedingly simple. “Yes, sir.” 

The door between the rooms is usually left open, but the captain closes it. The silence that swallows the room swallows the asset too. He hasn’t been instructed to sit or occupy himself in any way, so he stands at attention, facing the captain’s door. Every ten minutes, he shifts his weight from foot to foot.

As he waits, he anticipates what the captain might be doing right now. He could be arranging a cryofreeze. He could be requesting a wipe. He could be contacting HYDRA right now, making plans to return the asset to their care. The asset wonders if he will go quietly with the captain.

The asset jumps when the captain returns. But he returns alone, and that's all the asset can ask.

“Sorry, pal. I didn’t mean to startle you.” The captain pauses, looking the asset over. “Were you just standing here the whole time?"

“I wasn’t given an alternative order,” the asset says, a little defensively.

“Right,” the captain says, but he’s not really listening. He’s brought a box of medical supplies with him and he’s carefully laying them out on the bed. “Could you sit on the edge of the bed?”

“I can, sir.”

The captain glances back to him, works his jaw. “Sit on the edge of the bed,” he swallows thickly, “Soldier.”

The asset does as ordered, watching what the captain takes out. Ointments, bandages, and a surgical drill with a long silver bit like the needle of a syringe. The asset’s heart races at the sight of the drill, but it says nothing.

“Look out the window,” the captain says, catching his anxiety. The captain is always attuned to the asset’s emotional malfunctions. He’s always looking for ways to ease the asset’s stress.

By far, Captain Rogers is the kindest handler that the asset has ever had. But his kindness makes him unpredictable. At least the cruelty of Commander Rumlow was predictable.

“Look out the window,” the captain repeats, more firmly. “I’ll warn you before I touch you.”

His room has a window that takes up the western wall and from this window, he can observe the setting sun. This country is beautiful, truly. The wispy streaks of pink and orange clouds over the purple mountains settle the asset. But only for a moment. This feeling, too, is another malfunction. The asset is in for a lot more doctor’s visits if he keeps malfunctioning like this.

“Alright,” the captain says, tone lifting into the affectation of cheer. “Here are your standing orders: You tell me if you feel uncomfortable. You tell me if you’re confused about something. You tell me ‘no’ if you don’t want me to do anything.”

The captain looks over the asset. He adds, in a soft tone, “I’ll stop if you tell me to stop, Buck. You just gotta tell me.”

The asset isn’t supposed to feel or want, but he nods. “I’m ready to comply,” he promises the captain. That always set Commander Rumlow at ease.

This captain just smiles wanly. “Thank you, Bucky. Okay if we take off your shirt?”

The asset is beginning to gather that Captain Rogers prefers to phrase his commands in terms of a question. Without further command, he takes off his shirt and folds it onto the bed next to him.

Captain Rogers hisses when he sees what’s under the asset’s sleeve. Red lines streak from the metal cap up along his shoulder, like the legs of an octopus attached to his side. The skin around the metal itself is puffed up and pink. Worst is the smell the emanates from the socket.

“I brought topical and oral anesthetics,” the captain says. “Would you like either?”

Choices are hard for the asset, but he desperately does not want to ingest any medication. The topical anesthetic won’t do much. “Neither,” he says.

“That’s fine,” the captain agrees, but the asset can hear his apprehension. “Part of what’s causing the infection is this metal they’ve put around your socket. We need to remove the cap with this,” he taps the drill. “Is that okay?”

“I’m scared,” the asset blurts, not processing the words before he says them.

This changes something in the captain. He gets down on his knees in front of the asset, making himself small. He looks up at him, face earnest. “I know. And I’m sorry. We can do this another time if we need—”

“No,” the asset interrupts abruptly. “Let’s just…” he sighs. “Let’s just get it over with. Please?”

The captain nods, standing again. “Okay. We can take it slow, okay? We can take breaks?”

He lifts up the drill and gives it to the asset to observe first. When he has it in his hands, an idea occurs to him. “Can I do it myself?”

Steve smiles, and this one seems genuine as it lights up his eyes too. “We can definitely try that,” he says. “Thanks for asking.”

The asset smiles back, and that feels pretty good. He aims the drill towards the bolt closest to his collarbone, knowing that this one will hurt the most. The angle is awkward and Steve gently guides the bit into the screw.

“Press this button to start,” he says softly, finger hovering over the switch until the asset presses down himself.

It hurts, and it hurts like hell. He can feel the screw move deep inside the bone. But once it’s out, all he feels is relief. The screw remains connected to the magnetic drill bit. This one isn’t so long, only about the length of his thumb. But he stares at it, astounded at removing something they put in could be so easy.

For as long as his memory stretches back, this screw has been inside him. And now, within seconds, he’s extracted it.

“Okay, Buck?”

Buck. Bucky Barnes.

“Yeah,” Bucky says breathlessly, laughing a little. The screw is slick with blood, but Steve takes it without question. “Let’s do another one.”

He removes six more, each longer than the last. He was wrong about the pain level: the one deep in the hollow of his armpit hurts the most to drag out of his body. It’s also the longest. Both Steve and Bucky compare it to the length of their hands and are shocked when it exceeds both.

“Your hand is bigger than mine now,” Bucky says, pressing their palms together. Steve’s hand is warm and dry against his own. His fingertips only hit Steve’s first knuckle. But his palms are broader.

Steve curls his fingertips down over Bucky’s. It’s almost like holding hands.

“I’ve always had long fingers,” Steve says. He’s blushing, the tips of his ears a little pink. Bucky finds himself staring. “But we’re getting off track.”

Bucky agrees and they both set to the daunting task of removing the metal cap. They end up needing a set of curved tweezers that has Bucky breathing a little too fast. Steve braces a hand between his shoulder blades and eases the metal away from Bucky’s flesh. The inside of the cap is rusted and smells terrible. Steve sets it aside.

Next, Steve shows him a bottle of ointment and Bucky nods.

Shifting on the bed to angle the shoulder towards him, Bucky considers Steve and the setting sun again. Pink light floods the room, illuminating Steve’s skin. Recalling moments from their childhood is difficult right now, but Bucky thinks he remembers stained glass and endless Catholic masses. Thinks he remembers a man in the colored glass behind the altar, radiant with sunlight, that looked something like this. He was a man who suffered. Suffered like Steve.

Despite the callouses on his fingertips, Steve’s hands are gentle. Even as he brushes the most sensitive parts of Bucky’s shoulder, he doesn’t hurt him.

The cap pops off and cool air like a balm rushes to the healing wound. The sensation is brand new on these nerve endings, overwhelming and wonderful and agonizing. Already, he can feel his bones and skin mending. Bucky’s eyes water.

“You okay, Buck?”

Bucky nods, but isn’t up for speaking right now.

Steve lifts up a bottle of antibiotic pills. “I know you didn’t want to take the anesthetic…”

He doesn’t. He still doesn’t want to take anything. The idea of swallowing down some anonymous pills makes Bucky sick to his stomach.

“What if I took one with you?” Steve offers.

Bucky thinks this over, considers outright refusing because Steve won’t force him, but extends his palm out anyway. When it comes down to it, he trusts Steve. “Together, then.”

“Together, then.” Steve repeats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and letting me know what y'all think!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for explicit sexual violence in the second part of this chapter.

 

 

* * *

There's a darkness upon me that's flooded in light.  
In the fine print, they tell me what's wrong and what's right  
and it comes in black and it comes in white  
and I'm frightened by those that don't see it.

-The Avett Brothers, “Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise”

* * *

 

The year is 1928, and Bucky Barnes is ten years old. Bucky Barnes is ten years old, and he’s trying to keep Steve Rogers alive.

Steve’s mother left them in the apartment to work a 12-hour shift at the factory. Steve has the flu again, and his mother agonized about leaving him, but Bucky promised that he could take care of Steve.

They made popcorn and read aloud from the new S.S. Van Dine penny novel. When the snow storm hit, rattling the windows and blowing freezing air through the walls, Bucky made a fire and wrapped Steve in every blanket in the house. 

For a while, this kept his scrawny body warm enough. Then the sun set.

Bucky knocks on the neighbor’s door, bangs on it with both his fists, until Mrs. Whatshername opens the door. She's an elderly woman and clutches her dressing gown around herself while Bucky talks. He explains in a panicked rush the condition that Steve is in, that he might die tonight unless Bucky does something and does something soon. He begs her to let them use the bathtub. He finds himself crying as he explains this to her, ten years old and scared.

What choice does she have? She agrees.

Mrs. Whatshername’s bathtub is just a big, tin basin—no one in this apartment complex can afford a real bath tub—and Bucky drags it across the hall by himself. He’s big for his age, but not that big; the effort of dragging something so heavy makes sweat pool on his forehead, under his arms.

When Steve sees the effort Bucky’s putting in, he sighs.

“Would you cut it out? I’m fine,” he says from his bundle of blankets. He’s got his head covered so just the tip of his nose peeks out. It’s cute, but Bucky would never tell him that.

Bucky ignores him. He’s already boiling water on the stove. An assortment of the Rogers’ biggest pots and pans occupy every burner, with some extras waiting on the sidelines. The lids on the pots rattle from the steam of the boiling water.

“I’m fine,” Steve repeats. Bucky recognizes that petulant, irritable tone as Steve near his breaking point. That tone means Steve is going to make a stupid decision based on pride.

“I ain’t doing this for you,” Bucky says, dumping the first pot of boiling water into the tub. “I’m sick of your teeth chattering on for hours on end. Drives me nuts.”

He nudges at Steve to lean against the hot metal and, begrudgingly, he goes. “You don’t have to do this…” he says, but his body sags against the warmth. Grateful, but unable to express the gratitude.

“Shut it.” Bucky dumps the stew pot into the basin and feels the top with his hand. It’s too hot, burns his palm instantly, so he fills the pot with cold water and adds it in a bit at a time until he can submerge his whole hand.

“Wish you’d been this careful with dinner last night,” Steve quips, teeth clacking over each syllable. His skin is a grayish-blue, except for the fever flush rising high on his cheeks. It triggers something primal in Bucky, a deep set need to protect.

“Just get in the bath, Steve.” Bucky stares at him, sensing the standoff brewing between them.

With heavy lidded eyes, Steve just stares at him. He looks so weak, his body barely able to suspend itself, but his face is set with resolve. When he gets like this, Steve looks like an adult. Looks like a man.

It unsettles Bucky, knowing that Steve is ready for something that Bucky is not.

Steve is proud, prouder than Bucky in many ways. But he’s also kind. Bucky can use that to their advantage. “Please, Steve,” Bucky whispers, embarrassed at himself. “Please get in. I’m scared.”

Steve stares at him in deliberation. Judging by the set of his jaw and the steel in his eyes, he seems on the brink of refusal. But his sense of charity is bigger than his pride. He sighs and unravels himself from the blankets, moving toward the tub.

Before he gets in, Bucky presses his forehead against Steve’s like they do when they win a fight against somebody bigger than both of them. “Thank you, Steve. Thank you.”

\---

The year is inconsequential, and the Winter Soldier has no age or name. The asset is in Rogers’ holding cell, being tied to a tall barstool, the kind with a metal back.

Commander Rumlow has positioned two stools back to back. He binds the asset backwards to the chair, so that it is straddling the back, its hands bound there.

Captain Rogers is already tied to the other stool, facing the asset. He’s out cold with a burlap sack tied over his head, but the asset knows that this man is Captain Rogers. He smells like Captain Rogers, a scent that the asset is coming to enjoy. The time they spend together is never pleasant, but the asset likes seeing Rogers.

Rumlow binds their bodies together. He winds a rope around their calves so that their legs are pressed together from knee to ankle.  Even their feet, dangling from the height of the stool, are wrapped together. The asset can feel Rogers' toes twitch and curl in his sleep. Rumlow ties their wrists together, left to right and left to right. 

The only difference in their positions is this: Captain Rogers is full seated on his chair. The asset is tied with its buttocks on the very edge of the seat.

Another difference: Captain Rogers is fully clothed. The asset is perfectly naked.

The room is cold, and the asset trembles a bit. Goose flesh rises over its arms and thighs, except for where Rogers’ skin meets its skin. The asset flexes its feet and legs against Rogers, feels his body press against its own. The asset isn’t supposed to, but it enjoys this touch. An innocuous touch such as this is hard to come by in HYDRA possession.

“I think we’re ready to go,” the commander announces, startling the asset. “Oh, shh hush. I’ll be good to you today.”

Last time the commander was “good” to the asset, he carved his initials in its cheek. The asset can't remember why, if it served some greater purpose. But in all fairness, that only took a week to heal.

“Besides,” the commander continues, “We have a visitor today.”

Commander Rumlow dumps a bottle of water over the sack covering Captain Rogers’ head. The water soaks through and the captain jolts up, struggling to breathe against the wet fabric. Each breath pulls the fabric against his gaping mouth. The asset winces; it's been there.

The commander laughs and yanks the bag off his head, still cackling. Rogers shakes his head, eyes focusing on the bindings and then chair. His eyes lift up to the asset, widening in horrified realization.

The asset gives him a weak smile. Rogers smiles back, and that feels pretty good.

“Good morning, Cap,” Rumlow booms. “How’d you sleep?”

Rogers scans over their tied bodies, scowling at their hands. “Weird beds you got here, Rumlow.”

Rumlow chuckles at this and rubs his palm over the asset’s backside. His dry, calloused fingers find the rim of the asset’s hole. Lazily, he stretches it over three of his fingers. The asset tucks its head a bit, shifting against the touch. It feels good, and Rumlow doesn’t usually bother to make it feel good.

“Seems like the Winter Soldier here doesn’t mind.” He presses two, then three of his fingers inside, flexing against the tight clench of the asset’s insides. “Do you?”

The asset nods. “I like being of use, sir,” it says and this time, it almost means it. Rumlow has found its prostrate, but he’s only teasing it. He won’t make it feel _really_ good until the asset earns it.

“Told you he was a good boy,” Rumlow tells Rogers, stroking his fingers through the asset’s hair. Rogers is stone-faced, but he’s looking at the asset, not Rumlow. That’s going to piss off the commander; he hates being ignored.

Indeed, Rumlow retaliates by withdrawing his fingers and clapping the asset’s backside. Hard. The asset doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t break eye contact with Rogers.

Behind the asset, it hears the rumble of a zipper being undone, clothing rustles as Rumlow drops his pants. He presses the head of his cock just inside the ring of muscle, but doesn’t move any deeper.

Trained well, the asset works its hips back against Rumlow. If it strains up against the binds, it can raise itself off the seat of the stool enough to rock back against Rumlow. Rogers watches with a locked jaw as the asset sinks back over his cock. Each inch grinds against the asset, each inch catches its breath. Its eyes roll back in its head when Rumlow bottoms out.

“That’s it, ride it nice and slow.” Rumlow pats the asset’s thigh, gives it a squeeze. “Why don’t you tell Cap how much you like it?”

“I like it,” comes the answer. Its trembling against Rogers, rattling the stools together. The sound is constant, like the chattering of teeth. The dry press of Rumlow’s dick isn’t easy to take. It has to remember to breathe. It has to remember what it’s for.

Rumlow smacks the back of the asset’s head. The force is enough to knock its forehead against Rogers.  _Clunk._ They both see stars.

“Focus, Soldier. Convince him.” 

“I like it,” the asset swears, its tone defensive. “I like being of use. I like it.”

Rumlow sighs, the gust of his breath cascades down the asset's spine. “That’s all the Soviets taught it. Limited creativity.”

The mention of the Soviets seems to pique Rogers’ interest, or at least grim curiosity; for the first time, he actually looks at the commander.

Rumlow must notice. “I actually have a story about that,” Rumlow says, standing up straight.

He pats the asset’s thigh. “Fuck yourself on me, just like that.”

The asset nods and rocks back against him, its hands curling into fists against Rogers’ palms as it sets the kind of agonizing pace that Rumlow likes. Without a floor to brace its feet on, the asset is forced to lean against Rogers, using him as an anchor to push against.

“Fuck that’s good,” Rumlow says, losing himself for a moment. The asset has been told its good at this. Sometimes this is all it is good at. 

Rogers watches Rumlow, waiting. The asset watches Rogers. It finds the sight of him mysteriously soothing, even if the asset should be focusing on Rumlow’s pleasure.

“Anyway. Right.” Rumlow coughs. “The Soviets. This is a story about the Soviets and Sergeant Barnes.” He cranes his head around to catch the asset’s eye in the periphery. The asset turns its head to look at him. “Do you know who Sergeant Barnes is?”

The asset shakes its head. “I don’t remember.”

Rumlow ruffles its hair again and the asset finds itself chasing the touch. "They picked up Barnes sometime in the late 40s," he tells Rogers, "And apparently, he was hell to keep as prisoner. Just a mean bitch. They had to keep him drugged up half the time just so they could get ahold of him.”

Rogers turns his stare to the asset, his eyes flicking over its face. Maybe he’s trying to tell if Rumlow is telling the truth. The asset shrugs to let Rogers know that it truly doesn’t remember. It smiles a little, knowing that Rogers likes that, but imagines it must look more like a grimace. 

Rogers looks away.

“My guess is that’s how Operation Winter Soldier got started. Figured if they were going to dope him up, they might as well get a super soldier out of it.”

The asset perks up at the mention of its program, stopping its movements. Rogers knows another Winter Soldier, or at least a former Winter Soldier.

Rumlow suddenly slams his hips into it, brutal and devastating in force. The asset whimpers at the sudden intrusion, gasping and flexing its hands. Rogers leans up against it, and the press of his shins is a comfort.

Even if he tries to comfort the asset, Rogers still won’t look at it, probably disgusted. A man like Rogers wouldn’t subjugate himself to the commander like this. A man like Rogers wouldn’t _like_ being of use.

But then again, the asset isn’t a man.

Rumlow slaps the asset’s thigh, hard. “Do I need to get the crop or are you going to do what you’re supposed to?”

The asset shakes its head. “I’m sorry, Commander.” It screws its hips back, picking up where it left off.

When the commander is satisfied with the asset’s effort, he continues the story. “Apparently, he was asking for you. Insisted you’d be coming for him.”

Rumlow drags his fingertips over the asset’s spine. It shivers. “He was carrying on for years about it. ‘Just you wait until he finds us.’ ‘You’ll be sorry when you have to say that to Captain America.’ That kind of crap.” 

The asset is doing what it’s supposed to, fucking itself on Rumlow's cock, but he still takes it by both hips and yanks it back. Both stools scrape across the ground as Rumlow pulls the asset over himself. He bottoms out and the asset sobs, it feels so bad and so good.

“Atta boy,” Rumlow says, resting his chin on the asset’s shoulder. He’s breathing hard now, which means he’s close to coming. The asset flexes around him, encouraging a quick release. “Tell Captain Rogers here how much you like it.”

“I like it,” the asset says, looking at Rogers. But Rogers isn’t looking at it. He’s staring at the wall to the left, eyes somewhere far away.

“Here’s the kicker,” Rumlow says. He reaches up to take a handful of Rogers’ hair, looking him dead in the eye. “You listening?”

The look on Rogers’ face sets a chill in the asset. “I’m listening,” he says.

“Nobody ever told Barnes you had died.”

This makes Rogers look back to the asset. And now the asset can see that his eyes are wet, that he’s crying big fat tears. The asset watches each tear fall, trailing down his cheeks and making tracks of clean skin through the grime.

“It wasn’t until the 70s that he finally stopped asking for you. Dunno if that’s because he forgot about you or just gave up.”

“Stop,” Rogers sobs, his voice wrecked. He strains against the binds, and the stool groans, but doesn't give. “Goddamn it, I can’t hear any more.” He’s outright weeping now, body shuddering against the asset’s.

It’s terrible. The worst thing that the asset has ever seen. It cracks open a well of empathy inside of it.

It opens its fingers against Rogers’, spreading and intertwining with his. The asset closes its hand around Rogers, smiling again when Rogers looks up in shock to it. He looks at their hands, looks back to the asset.

Nodding, it opens the fingers of its metal hand, inviting Rogers into the gaps. Most of the agents here are too terrified to even touch the asset’s arm, but Rogers holds onto its hand like a lifeline.

“Aw,” Rumlow pants. “That’s sweet.” He sinks in until their hips are flush, staying there.

The asset squirms, clamping down on Rogers’ fingers. It needs to come, but doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want Captain Rogers to see; knows that it will somehow make things worse. But its conditioning is strong, stronger than the asset itself. The asset is trembling, each muscle on the edge of failure, and the tremors rattle them both. 

It comes, ducking its head in shame as the orgasm rolls over it. It can't bear to look at Captain Rogers.

Rumlow laughs, “What a slut! You see that, Cap? Came without even being touched,” he delights and squeezes its backside. “Don’t move, Soldier. That’s an order.”

The asset stills itself, gritting its teeth against the thrusts. Each press of Rumlow burns inside of it, but he's making quick work of it. He's lost his pace now, just fucking how it feels good. When Rumlow comes inside, the asset sighs in relief.

Rumlow sags against its back for a moment, but the moment he catches his breath, he pulls out.

Come leaks from the asset, dripping down its bare thighs to its calves. The asset doesn’t know if some of it gets on Rogers. It doesn’t want to look.

"Good job everyone." Rumlow ruffles the asset’s hair again. “I’ll come back for you boys in a bit. Take a breather.”

The asset listens carefully as Rumlow readjusts himself and paces to the door. It doesn’t relax until it hears the cell door close behind Rumlow. It takes slow, deep breaths, trying to calm the tremors in its muscles. Trying to come down.

They sit in silence, both panting.

“Hey,” Rogers says softly into the quiet. His throat is still choked with the burn of tears, but his voice is kind. “I’m going to get you out of this.”

The asset closes its eyes. That sounds nice. It hadn’t even considered there might be a place for the asset away from here.

“We’ll go someplace nice, with a view. Someplace warm.”

The asset loathes the cold. How does Rogers know that?

“I’ll get us out of this,” Rogers says, “I promise.”

The asset presses its forehead against Rogers’ and feels somehow that this is a victory. “Thank you,” it whispers.

It has no reason to, but it believes him. Captain Rogers will get them out of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of why this chapter is a day late is because I had originally written a much darker, more violent chapter. If you'd like to read that version, it'll be up soon as "In the Lowest Deep, a Lower Deep."


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

“Ain’t no man who can save me.  
Ain’t no man who can enslave me.  
Ain’t no man nor men that can change the shape my soul is in.”

-The Avett Brothers, “Ain’t No Man”

* * *

  

Bucky wakes up to bright, midday sunlight and a sweat-damp bed. He is not a ten-year-old boy, but he's not the asset either. His arm is missing. He is alone in this room. A rush of relief rolls over him, glad to be safe and in the warm Wakandan sun. That nightmare is behind him. That life is behind him.

He makes his way out of bed, limbs still a little shivery from muscle memory and phantom pain. Bucky knocks on the door dividing his room from Steve’s. No answer. He knocks again, louder. Still no answer. Steve must already be up.

The low grumble in his belly alerts him to his pressing hunger. There are ingredients for pancakes in the kitchen. One of the greatest gifts of his newfound freedom: pancakes made from scratch. Bucky opens the door to the hallway, already strategizing his butter to syrup ratio, but remembers midway through the door that he forgot to take his antibiotic this morning. He lets the door fall closed behind him as he retreats towards his bedside. It's heavy and shakes the wall when it closes.

He’s got the antibiotic pill scooped up in the cradle of his palm when he hears whispering from Steve’s room.

“I think he’s gone.” It’s Natasha’s voice. 

Bucky’s hackles rise. He breathes through his mouth to listen better. What is she doing in Steve’s room?

“But that sounds terrible," she continues. "What did your therapist say about it?”

Bucky needn’t have been so paranoid; Steve’s voice filters under the door next. “That I’m not responsible for Bucky’s recovery.” There’s a long pause, and Bucky can hear the dry click of Steve’s throat as he swallows. “Or his trauma.”

Natasha sighs. “It sounds like you don’t wholly believe that.” 

“I do, but…”

Bucky holds his breath; Steve’s voice is getting softer and softer. He has to press his ear to the gap between the wall and the door, just to catch every syllable. It occurs to him that this is spying, but he's done worse things than listen in on a conversation about himself.

“But what, Steve?”

“Sometimes, I see him, I look at his face and his arm, and I think about all the things they did to him—”

“They did to both of you,” Natasha interjects, gently. 

“Yeah. Both of us.” Steve repeats numbly.

There’s a long pause, and Bucky would give anything to be in that room. To be a different man than himself. 

“I’m sorry," Natasha says, her voice a low murmur. "I shouldn’t have interrupted.”

“It’s fine, Nat. I'm just trying to put together what I mean.” More silence, then Steve admits, "Bucky didn't mean to, but...he, the Winter Soldier, he helped them. And sometimes I could tell that he was fighting it, but sometimes it was like he wasn't there at all. He was someone else."

There is a stinging behind Bucky's ears, under his eyes, and deep in the center of his chest.

"Do you blame him for that?"

“No, I just look at him, and I...sometimes, I’m there again. I look at him and I'm there again.”

There's not enough air in this room to fill Bucky's lungs.

“You were held prisoner by HYDRA for several months with Sergeant Barnes. Maybe you need—”

“No,” Steve says firmly.

Bucky can imagine the hard ridge of his brow, that stubborn expression that means Steve won't back down no matter what. He pictures them standing face to face, Steve inflating his body and squaring his shoulders to his biggest size. Even when he was tiny, he would hold his body this way when he wanted something. When he intended to get it.

“I know what you’re going to say and no. I don’t need space from him. I don’t _want_ space from him. I just…” He sighs, and his next words come out muffled. He has his face in his palms again, Bucky can just tell by sound. “We’ve been here for months, that's all. I just want to be better already. I want us both to be better.”

Bucky presses his forehead to the door, unsure how much more of this he can listen to.

Natasha seems in a similar dilemma. “You don’t think that some distance from Barnes won’t help you get better faster?”

Steve laughs. “You Russians. That double-negative is making my head spin.”

“You know what I mean, Rogers. I’ve been talking to Sam, and—”

“And nothing, Nat.” Steve’s voice is hard now, just on the edge of mean. “I know what Sam thinks I should do. I know what you think I should do. But I know what I _need_ to do. And I’m not leaving him. I’m not leaving him now, and I’m not leaving him ever.” 

More silence, and Bucky would guess that they’re in a standoff, just staring at each other. He's been on the receiving end of that stare, he's been where Natasha stands now.

And, just like Bucky, eventually, it’s Natasha who backs down. “Okay, okay," she sighs. Her voice is moving towards the door of Steve's room. "I just want you to look out for yourself the way you look out for him. That’s all.”

“Don’t need to look out for myself when you’ve got my six.”

This makes Natasha laugh. “I’ve got all your numbers, Rogers. But I’m just one woman.”

\---

 

Bucky avoids Steve for the day, figuring that he might need the space he didn’t ask for. His own therapist (an elderly woman who doesn’t make Bucky sit during sessions) highly discouraged trips into the city alone, but she also  _encouraged_ Bucky to make decisions for himself.

Contradicting orders used to confuse the asset to the point of malfunction. Once, the commander and lieutenant ordered it to eat different meals and so the asset didn't eat for several days, deliberating between the demands.

Now, Bucky craves plums. So, he goes down to the market to see if Wakanda grows plums.

Therapists, it turns out, are often right. The city is a close press of people flowing through narrow streets. The unpredictability of so many other people in one place is overwhelming, and Bucky stands out in the crowd.

He’s immediately overcome with the sensation of being watched, of being followed. He most definitely is being watched anyway; the only white man in Wakanda.

But now he’s determined, propelled by the singular drive of plums, or some fruit resembling them. He focuses on the forward movement of the crowd, on the hot sun against his pale neck. When he was with HYDRA, access to the sun was scarce. He would spend years in the dark, in the cold. And when the asset did finally get into the sunlight, it wouldn't know what to do with it. It would flinch away from the light and miss the dark of its cryotank.

Now, the sun feels like a hand on his back, pushing him through the hardship of the day.

He finds his way to a fruit stand. They _do_ have plums in Wakanda. Oranges, too, which are Steve’s favorite. Smiling to himself, Bucky fills a bag with them, brimming to the top. He’s testing the weight of a strange, spiked fruit in his hand when the hair on the back of his neck stands up.

He’s being watched again.

“Steve,” he says to his handful of fruit. “You’re giving me the creeps.”

Sure enough, Steve emerges from behind a crowd around the fish stand. He’s barely attempted to dress like a local, jeans clearly visible, but he looks properly abashed, shoulders tucked up near his ears as his hands dig into his pockets.

“I couldn’t find you in the apartment. I thought maybe..." _You'd forgotten you were Bucky_. Steve shakes his head. "Why are you here?”

Bucky shows him the spiked fruit in his hand, his little finger curled around the handle of his bag of plums and oranges. Steve peers into the bag and seems surprised to see that it's full of fruit. Bucky smothers a laugh.

Steve leans back, already looking around. His eyes flick between the faces of the shoppers, assessing risk. His hands are shifting in his pockets, cracking his knuckles with his thumbs like he did as a young boy.

A ghost of a smile flickers over Bucky’s face, remembering Steve young.

He’s calm now, but the crowd is making him anxious. Bucky can see him planning his exits, checking his six. They should probably leave soon anyway; they can't both melt down in the marketplace.

“Here, hold this,” Bucky says, giving him the bag of fruit. “I don’t have enough hands.”

He overpays the fruit seller, still unaccustomed to Wakandan currency no matter how many times somebody teaches him. Then he sidles next to Steve, left side pressed up against his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Oh, no," Steve says, waving his hand. "We can stay, Buck, we don’t have to—”

Bucky shrugs. “I really just wanted some plums.”

It’s not quite a lie. And Bucky is good at those, both lies and half-truths. He also just doesn’t want to go back to the apartment, where Natasha and Sam might be waiting for them. It’s good that Steve has friends, the kind that care about him enough to call him on his shit. But calling Steve on his shit also means calling Steve on shit about Bucky. And there's a lot there to call him on.

“But I was thinking about eating them on that ridge near the gorge. The one you can see from our balcony.”

When Bucky first got to Wakanda, he would sit on that balcony and marvel at the bigness of the world. How much more there was to it than he remembered. How much they had kept from him. Now, he wants to see it up close.

He nudges Steve. “Would you be up for a walk?”

Steve nods. He’s pressed up tight against Bucky’s side, his arm slightly behind his back. His arm is warm, even through the blanket that Bucky has wrapped around his shoulders to conceal the missing limb.

"Did you know that this was your first time out on your own?" Steve asks as they walk.

Bucky didn't know that, but doesn't want to tell Steve that. "I wouldn't really call it on my own since you're here." He pauses and nudges Steve hard enough to make him stumble. "Not that I'm complaining."

They walk with their sides pressed tight, even when the crowd loosens, and they no longer need to crush so close. They stay together.

\---

 

“You think it ever gets cold here?” Bucky asks, tossing the pit of his plum into the gorge below. Their feet dangle over the ridge, and it reminds Bucky of sitting on the edge of the pier, eating popcorn with Steve.

So far, he’s eaten three enormous, black plums back to back. The juice slicks the inside of his wrist and under his chin where it dribbled over his jaw. He’s full now, but he reaches into the bag for another.

“Technically, we’re in winter right now.” Steve says. He fastidiously picks the white strings from the segments of oranges, then peels the translucent skin from the wedge before eating the inside. These peels, he keeps in a neat pile on the rock next to him.

(Earlier, Bucky told him it’s not littering if its biodegradable. Steve told him that the Wakandan ecosystem might be delicate. Bucky accused him of being delicate, to which Steve said, "Not anymore," but Bucky questions the truth of this. Steve still looks pretty delicate to him.)

“Huh,” Bucky remarks, thinking back to his dream the night previous. His nightmare. It feels far away now that he's here, looking over the rocks and green of the Wakandan landscape. “When Steve Rogers makes a promise, he keeps it.”

“What do you mean?” Steve says around a mouthful of orange.

“Someplace warm with a view,” he quotes, looking over the red rocks of the plateau before the gorge. The hearty brush that springs from the red dust. The sun is high over the mountains, but the sun sets quickly here. Soon it will be dark and there will be more stars than black sky.

“When did I say that?”

Bucky looks to him, craning his jaw. He doesn’t know how to phrase it, can’t find the words without unpacking the whole mess of it all. The whole wreck of their lives. “Recently. Before we got here.” He takes a bite of plum, breaking through the bitter skin with his front teeth. “I just remembered last night.”

Steve nods. They’ve talked about Bucky’s quasi-dreams, his nightmares and memories. They’ve talked about Steve’s too, just less.

Bucky finishes his fourth plum and drops the pit down into the gorge again. They both watch it hit the ground and roll down the steep chase of the slope. When it topples out of sight, Bucky takes a deep breath. He looks up to the sky, so blue. So big. Like an eye with its eyelids spread wide open. 

“You didn’t drop me,” Bucky says abruptly. “I fell. There’s a difference.”

He doesn’t need to look at Steve to know that he’s flinching. In the periphery, he can see him hunch over. He can see his hand clench around his orange, squeezing juice from where his fingers plunge into the flesh. “You heard Nat and I talking this morning. I knew it. Buck, I didn’t—”

“Shut it,” Bucky says, not unkindly. “I’m trying to get something off my chest here.” He still can’t bring himself to look at Steve, knows that if he does, he’ll cry. And he’s getting damned sick of crying. "You think you can listen for two seconds? Good.

“The Soviets, they were always trying to convince me you did it on purpose. Dropped me on purpose. Or that you weren’t coming for me because you didn’t want to, or didn’t need to, or some crap like that. But Steve, I…” He clears his throat, staring straight up into the sky. “I never for a second believed them.”

“Bucky—”

“And the commander... _Rumlow_ is full of shit,” he spits out, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. He gets plum juice in them, and that only makes them water more. “I never gave up on you coming to get me. Never. Not once.”

Steve pulls him into a sideways hug. It’s awkward, and Bucky can’t return it without wrapping his arm around Steve’s other side, turning it into a full hug. But that feels good, that feels right. They hugged when Steve rescued him from the bunker in the forties. They'll hug now.

Steve stoops his head to press his face into Bucky’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Bucky. You have no idea--” 

“Ain’t no sorry,” Bucky says, shaking his head. “And if there is, then I’ve got more to apologize for than you.”

He held Steve’s mouth open for Rumlow. He helped subdue him for HYDRA. He’s killed people, good people. These are crimes that Bucky hasn’t answered for yet.

“Then I forgive you for all of it,” Steve says instantly.

It’s a nice thought, but Steve’s a damn moron. Justice doesn’t end with absolution.

Bucky leans back, rubbing his eyes on his sleeve. Steve is rubbing his own into the collar of his shirt. Bucky pulls out another plum, takes a bite and offers it to Steve, who eats it from his hand. Bucky’s nose wrinkles when he laughs, and Steve looks up at him like he hung the sun.

“You looked weird to me when I couldn’t quite remember you,” Bucky says. His voice is still a little waterlogged, but it doesn't bother him. Steve's a mess too.

“Oh yeah?” Steve leans down to steal another bite from Bucky’s palm. Inside his mouth is the pale purple mush of Bucky's plum and the pulp of his own orange.  “How so?” he asks, spitting juice all over Bucky. Probably on purpose, knowing the punk. 

Bucky laughs and rubs his face off against Steve’s bicep. “I kept thinking you were too big for your face. You looked plain wrong to me. Guess I was remembering skinny Steve.”

“Ah,” Steve says, nodding. “Sometimes, I wish I was still that guy.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you are.” 

“Just bigger.”

“Bigger pain in my ass, maybe. But…” Bucky taps the center of Steve's chest, aiming for the bony ridge of his sternum so it’ll hurt a little. Steve always listens better when he’s hurting. “I wouldn’t have remembered you if you weren’t the same guy.”

Steve’s face gets a little strange over that. “How can you be sure? That I’m the same guy, that is.” 

Bucky finishes off his plum, thinking this through. He considers the pit before flinging it at Steve’s chest. It bounces off the center and back into Bucky’s lap.

“Well,” Bucky says, “When I couldn’t remember myself, I remembered you.”

Steve takes this into consideration. He picks up his pile of orange rinds and tosses them into the gorge. "Okay," he says, "I guess that's a start."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line, "Ain't no sorry," comes from one of my favorite webcomics/graphic novels, [The Less than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal.](http://tjandamal.com/) If you haven't read it yet, you'll be so grateful you clicked on that link.
> 
> Many thanks to a commenter, Courtney, for the suggestion that Steve talk to Natasha.
> 
> And thank you to everyone for reading and supporting this fever dream of a series.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has graphic violence and mutilation, but no sexual violence.

* * *

“I got some radio wires soldered to my heart.  
You’re the only thing that’s coming in…  
See, I’ve been praying for a signal, a sign that you haven’t sent.”

-Rainbow Kitten Surprise, “Hide”

* * *

 

 

The year is 1950-something and Bucky Barnes has royally fucked up.

They’ve been pumping him full of all kinds of drugs, all kinds of serums that make him feel on the verge of death. He’s nearly delirious with fatigue, with spinning hallucinations of falling from the train, of being dragged through the snow.

But that’s not why he’s fucked. Zola is here, crouching in front of him as he’s chained to a metal surgical table. He's got that snide smile crawling up the edges of his face, and Bucky thinks he couldn't hate a man more.

“You again,” he says weakly.

“Me again,” Zola affirms. Just the nasal slide of the voice is enough to send shudders down Bucky’s spine. “How are you feeling today, Sergeant Barnes?” 

“Little sick to my stomach. Your breath reeks.”

Zola scowls at him, straightening. “Increase the dosage before we begin,” he tells the doctors. “And…” He casts a look over Bucky’s body. “Start trials on his arm. The left.”

Bucky looks to his left arm. It broke at the humerus in the fall from the train, and it hasn't been the same since. In the past few months, there has a numbness that pulses from the heel of his palm to his fingers. He flexes those fingers now and finds them stiff, difficult to move.

The doctors shuffle out, but return quickly, toting along a rolling cart of surgical tools. They inject something into his neck and the cold serum shivers through his veins. A bright light is shone over Bucky’s head. It blinds him.

\---

His understanding of space and time fractures there, under the light.

The year is 1946 and Bucky Barnes is plummeting. He's free falling into the white abyss of the gorge below the train tracks, his hand still stretched up to catch Steve’s. He's picking up speed. He's colliding with the ground, snow several feet deep.

Whiteness, it turns out, is the absence of everything. Not black.

\---

 

The light is taken off of him and the doctors are standing around him, hooking him up to machines and IVs, strapping him to the table by all limbs.

A doctor presses a bolt perpendicularly against the inside of his elbow, lining up a drill bit to it. They’re going to drill it into him. They’re going to screw a goddamn bolt into his goddamn arm.

Bucky becomes hyperaware of the space between his tendons where the bolt will go. He can picture the lock of his humerus and radius at the elbow, where the bolt might fit in. And once that bolt is there, that pocket of pink skin and soft flesh will never be the same.

“Please,” Bucky begs suddenly, not knowing what else to say. They won't stop, no matter how he threatens or mocks them. No matter how much he fights. He has nothing else to say. Just, “Please.”

The doctor turns on the drill.

When the bolt is driven all the way in, the damn Soviet doctors don’t even _do_ anything to it. It doesn’t seem to have served any purpose other than to ruin his arm. He’s not even bolted to the table. There’s just a screw in his elbow that wasn’t there before.

But the doctors are still watching him, waiting. They note how much blood gushes from the wound. They note the way that his skin twists around the bolt, the way his fingers twitch, and how much pain he's in.

Then, so slowly that Bucky doesn’t notice at first, the bolt moves. It’s his body, his body that pushes out the bolt. It doesn’t twist it out, but shoves it so that the spiral grooves of the screw tear at his skin as it exits. Bucky can’t even scream. He just watches the bolt move from his arm and then fall with a clatter to the metal table.

“What the hell?” He looks up at Zola, wild-eyed and furious. He jolts up against the straps that bind him, rattling the whole table and startling the doctors around him. “What the hell did you do to me?”

The doctors are shaking hands, exchanging congratulations. They are readying another drill with another bolt, this one as long as his hand. The entry isn't the most painful part, it's the sensation of something inside him. Something _wrong_ lodged into his body. And this time, Bucky _does_ scream. He screams at them to stop. He screams his name and number.

He screams for Steve.

They drill four more bolts into different points of his arm, each longer than the last. They inject something into his shoulder that cuts off all feeling in his arm. For a moment, it’s a mercy to escape the sickening wrong feeling of the metal in his arm. Then, Bucky realizes he can’t move his arm.

Zola says, “Sedate him.”

White, bright haze fills his head. There is a loud, buzzing grind close to his left ear and then a sudden lightness in his side.

 

\---

 

The year is 1946, and Sergeant James Buchanen Barnes is 38 years old. He is sharing a tent with Steve, watching his naked back as he gets ready for bed. The night is cold outside the tent, snow falling, but inside is warm from their bodies.

They just fought hellfire and fury, but Steve hasn’t sustained any damage. His bare back is a perfect slate of skin and spine. When Bucky checks himself, all his bruises have healed. He doesn’t tell Steve; it would worry him.

 

\---

 

“Steve?” Bucky says, but his mouth isn’t cooperating. He might not say it at all because there’s no response. Something weighs down his left shoulder, he looks over to it and a blinding pain explodes from his shoulder.

“He’s waking up,” someone says. A doctor.

“Increase the dosage.” Zola’s nasal Swiss. “We’re almost done.”

 

\---

 

Steve is still getting ready for bed, but he’s looking at Bucky now. His face is strange and hazy, murky and vague in a way that faces shouldn’t be.

“My arm,” Bucky says weakly. “My arm is…”

“I know,” Steve says, and the sound of his voice is an instant comfort. “Here, Buck. You can have mine.”

Steve grips his own left wrist. He yanks down. Bucky watches in horror as he rips his arm off at the shoulder, the tendons and muscle separating from the socket. The inside his arm is stuffed full of wires.

 

\---

 

“Stop it!” Bucky screams, feverish and hysterical. “Stop!”

“The procedure has already begun.” Zola’s voice is close, very close to his ear. Reality returns in gradations, like a fog rolling through the forest.

The year is 1950-something and Bucky is royally fucked.

He’s still laying on the table, surrounded by a haze of doctors and medical equipment. Something is wrong, terribly wrong with his left arm. It’s too heavy and when he lifts his hands to observe, only one trembles with the fear he feels. His left hand isn’t his own. It’s metal.

In an instant, he’s got the closest doctor by the throat. He snaps the doctor’s neck in just the grip of the metal hand. Blood pops from his arteries, like a balloon.

Pandemonium.

The doctor is dead on the floor, his leg twitching postmortem. The other doctors are huddled around him, trying to subdue him. Bucky is being restrained to the table, he’s being dragged up off it. He’s being carried to a metal pod.

“Let’s try the cryotank,” Zola says. “See if that cools him off.” 

Whiteness, it turns out, is the absence of everything. Not black.

 

\---

 

The year is 2018 and Bucky Barnes has been alive 110 years. He’s in his bed. There’s no arm bolted to his shoulder. There’s no cryotank. It was a dream, it was a dream, it was a dream, it was a _dream_.

“Bucky?”

The door between his room and Steve’s has cracked open. Steve leans his head against the doorframe. He’s still in his clothes from the day; he never went to bed. 

“I heard you...Well, I thought you might be…”

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky cuts him off, sitting up and rubbing his face. He’s got a bit of a beard growing there that he thought he’d already shaved off. But there it is, back again. “Did we go to the gorge today? Eat plums?”

Steve shakes his head, entering the room. He sits on the edge of the bed, facing Bucky. “No, that was last week. You had a checkup with Shuri today. To prepare for the surgery?” 

“Right, right,” Bucky says, but he doesn’t remember meeting with the doctor today. When he lowers his hand from his face, he finds that his fingers are trembling. 

His attention snaps to Steve’s arm, and of course it is there. Bucky grips the fabric at the shoulder of his t-shirt, focusing on what’s real. Steve rolls his shoulder against Bucky’s fist, rocking his head from side to side. 

“Was it the one where I take my arm off again?” Steve asks.

Bucky laughs, incredulous. There will never be anybody who knows him as well as Steve does. “I’ve had that dream before?”

“A couple of times.” Steve extends his arm to Bucky, palm up. “Your therapist says it’s a manifestation of trauma and guilt.”

Bucky snorts. “Sounds about right. Or maybe I’m just jealous of your arm.”

Steve chuckles. Bucky thinks he might have made that joke before, but Steve is too gracious to call him on it.

Bucky reaches out and strokes his fingertips over Steve’s bicep, the inside of his elbow, his forearm, his palm. The skin of his arm is smooth and fine, blonde hair covers his forearms. Their fingers brush, and Bucky holds his curled against Steve’s for a moment.

It’s Steve who slides his hand into Bucky’s own, and it’s Steve who lies down next to him in bed, on top of the covers.

They don’t let go. Even as they settle in for sleep. It’s awkward, and both of them have to cross their arms over their fronts to lock fingers, but Bucky isn’t letting go of his hand and neither is Steve.

After a while, Steve asks, “You gonna be okay tomorrow, Buck?”

Bucky looks up at the ceiling fan. After Steve discovered his sensitivity to ceiling fans, they never turned this one on again. Someone offered to remove it, but Bucky insisted that he didn’t want to ruin the apartment the Wakandans gave them. The fan only bothers him when it’s switched on.

“I’ll be fine, Steve,” he says. And it’s a promise that this version of himself, calm and rational, can keep.

But he can’t speak for the Winter Soldier.


	7. Chapter 7

 

* * *

“But God I wish that I was better than I am,  
but no luck, no love, no Gospel I could understand.  
I’m nothing that you ever wanted to lean on, but even then.”

-Rainbow Kitten Surprise, “Cocaine Jesus”

* * *

 

“Are you ready?” the doctor asks.

“Ready to comply.”

“Excuse me?”

The asset frowns. “I’m ready to—”

“Bucky?” Steve says, resting a hand on his shoulder. The room comes into focus around them. “You okay?”

Bucky blinks. He’s sitting in the bright, clean Wakandan medical room. Steve is next to him. In front of him, Shuri, the doctor, has a long black case on her lap. She’s excited to show him what’s inside, he can see it in the gleeful expression that lights her face. Scientists are all the same.

He knows what’s inside the case.

“I’m okay,” he reassures Steve, even pats his back. “Can I see it?”

Shuri nods, undoing the clasps. “It’s made entirely of vibranium, 100 percent. Completely pure. So, it’ll be lighter than titanium even and—”

The moment she opens the case, Bucky tunes out her rundown of the specs. Like his Soviet and American prosthetics, this arm has plates. But it is black and much slimmer, the exact size of his flesh arm. And no bolts.

Bucky rubs the bare skin of his stump, feeling along the glenohumeral joint which is still pocked with botched attachment attempts. Both the Soviets and Americans had no problem making the arm, and both struggled to actually get the damn thing on.

Shuri seems to sense his anxiety. “It’ll still require surgical attachment, like we discussed last week, but nothing so barbaric as basically stapling it to your side.”

Steve flinches at her crude wording, but Bucky gets a kick out of it. If the Americans had thought of industrial staples, he’s sure they would have tried it. Maybe they did and he just doesn't remember.

Shuri shows him the metal cap and explains that they will fix it around his shoulder. The arm will be attached to this port, making it easily removable for repair in the future. She explains the science behind this procedure, the medical advancements that vibranium will allow.

Bucky’s eyes wander around the room, looking for the surgical table they'll lay him over. But all the medical equipment is covered in sheets, perhaps to make him more at ease. He can make out the shapes of the MRI machine he busted several months ago, and the examining chair. But there is something in the corner that he hasn’t seen the shape of before.

“Does that sound alright, Sergeant Barnes?” 

Bucky nods, attention back on her. “Do I have to be sedated for this?”

Shuri and Steve exchange a nervous glance. Steve leans toward Bucky, brushing his knuckles against Bucky’s knees.

“When we started talking about this a few weeks ago," Steve says, "You agreed that sedation would be best. Does that still sound—”

“That’s fine,” Bucky interrupts. He just wants to get this over with. He wants to get this over with right now. “Knock me out.”

Relief eases through Steve’s body, and he smiles at Bucky. It’s possible that Bucky’s making the right choice.

He submits to sedation.

 

\---

 

The year is 1998, and the asset has destroyed its arm. The asset has damaged it before, but never intentionally and never to this extent. It completely totaled the arm. And now its American handlers are trying to discover why.

“We were waiting by the train tracks for the target, as ordered,” a handler explains to their superior. His hands are clasped behind his back, and he anxiously wrings them, out of sight of their superior.

The asset only knows their superior by last name: Pierce. He’s handsome in a wholesome, completely American sense, but his eyes are hard. The asset can’t remember much about him, not even his rank or title.

Pierce’s face is an unmoving portrait of displeasure. He addresses the asset now, voice deceptively calm. “What happened while you were waiting for the train, Soldier?”

The asset looks down to its mangled arm. The fingers are crumpled at odd angles, like a spider’s legs after it has died. The arm itself is twisted, the plates crunched together. When the asset tries to move its arm, nothing happens.

None of this hurts; the asset has no feeling in this arm. When the prosthetic is like this, unfeeling and unmoving, it is as if the asset never had an arm there at all.

But it does have feeling in its shoulder, especially where the arm is partially torn from the socket. It is no longer bleeding, and the blood has dried between the plates of the arm along the bicep and forearm.

“Soldier,” Pierce reminds. “Mission report.”

“We were waiting for the target’s train to arrive. When it passed, I put the arm under the rail wheels.”

Pierce nods, turning his attention back to the asset’s handler. “Was it the target’s train?”

“Yes.”

“Were you trying to stop the train, Soldier?”

The asset can remember a different train, but it was _inside_ that train. And it wasn’t in a passenger cabin, but a freight car. In this memory, it doesn’t have a metal arm. This memory, if it’s even real, is from a different time.

The asset shakes its head. “I can’t remember.”

“Alright,” Pierce addresses the handler. “I assume the train crashed, after the asset's intervention. Did the target survive?”

“No, sir. There were fifteen casualties, including the target.”

This makes Pierce smile. “Very well, perhaps this is for the best then.” He shrugs, but the asset can distinguish the affectation of nonchalance from genuine indifference. Pierce’s eyes are still steel. 

It can remember the train hurdling toward them, the metallic shuffle of the wheels against the rail. It can remember the sudden and overwhelming urge to get this arm away from itself. Get it off.

“We’ve been working on a new arm for you, anyway.” Pierce says. The asset lifts its eyes to him, a little dazed.

"A new arm," the asset repeats. It looks down to the destroyed arm.

Pierce nods to the techs behind the asset. They cluster around it instantly, eager to begin playing with the prosthetic. They bring out the new arm in a long, silver briefcase. They don’t show it to the asset, but it can catch a glimpse of it. It is almost disappointed by the design. The new arm looks almost identical to its Soviet model, just bigger.

The techs are inexperienced with the Soviet technology. The old arm is attached to three bones in the asset’s shoulder: its clavicle, acromion, and scapula at the glenohumeral joint. The bolt attached to the joint is already torn loose, and the bolts to the acromion bone are ripped clean off. But the arm is still very much attached to its clavicle.

Foolhardy and careless, the techs try to simply pull the arm off with a robotic claw. The moment that the machine tugs back on the arm, the bolt saws through the asset’s clavicle, splintering the bone. The asset doesn’t even flinch.

Pierce leans in toward it, resting a hand on its fractured shoulder. “I hope you remember this, Soldier.”

 

\---

 

“He’s waking up,” someone says.

“Increase the dosage,” the doctor answers, voice light and accented. “We’re almost done.”

There is a soft whir directly next to the asset’s ear, rumbling its glenohumeral joint. There is no pain in its shoulder, but there will be soon. There’s always pain when they operate on it. There is always pain for the asset.

“Almost done, Buck.” A man’s voice. A hand on the asset’s flesh hand. The asset recognizes that voice. It’s important that the asset doesn’t forget who it belongs to.

It opens his eyes toward the voice. It frowns. “Steve?” Steve Rogers is here? But how…No, the asset knows; they must be in HYDRA possession. With the Americans. “What are you doing here?” 

There is a bright light above the asset’s head and a strange weight on its left shoulder. When it turns its attention there, it finds a new black arm. Different from the Soviet arm that it destroyed under the tracks. It's not like its other arm, not like its real arm. A new arm. A new arm that doesn’t belong.

“What the hell did you do to me?”

It needs it _off._

The asset shoves away the doctors, who clamber toward the door. Steve is on it in a second, holding it back by the shoulders. But he doesn’t understand; he _has_ both his arms. Nobody has ever taken his body and played with it. 

It shoves Steve back, and his head hits the wall with a hard _clunk_ _._

The asset digs its flesh fingers around the metal plate bound to its shoulder, looking for the bolts. There are none.

“It won’t come off like that,” a doctor says, approaching the table slowly. She's tiny and has both hands held up in surrender, but that doesn't mean she's trustworthy. The asset recognizes her, almost. It can’t place her as a Soviet or American doctor. There’s a gap there, like a missing tooth.

Unlike the others, she didn’t scatter. There isn’t fear in her eyes, just curiosity. Doctors are always so curious about the asset’s body. It’s always being observed and tested.

She reaches for the arm. “But I can help—”

“Shuri,” Steve shouts, “No!”

Steve. Steve is still in this room. The asset doesn’t want him here, doesn’t want him to see what the doctors will do to it. 

It's too late, the moment she touches its arm, the asset takes up the doctor by the throat. It can feel the quiver of her pulse against its flesh fingers. It holds her in the air like that, watching her face, trying to remember how he knows her. Trying to remember why Steve is here.

Her fingers claw at its hand, and it reflexively squeezes down. “I’m sorry, Sergeant Barnes,” she whispers.

Sergeant Barnes?

She twists a bead on her bracelet and electricity lights up the asset from its fingertips all the way down its spine. They both drop to the floor.

 

\---

 

Bucky shakes his head, sitting up from the floor of the medical room. He has a new arm, and he uses it to push himself up off the ground. Immediately, someone is in front of him. Bucky looks up. It's Sam, holding a gun to Bucky's head.

Some things never change.

He rubs his face, finds the beard that he swore he’d already shaved, looks around the room. “What happened?”

There’s a surgical table overturned in the center of the room. The doctors are gone, and Steve and Natasha are arguing in whispers near the door. When they see that Bucky is awake, Steve moves toward him instantly. Natasha stays back.

Steve pushes the barrel of Sam’s gun away from Bucky as he approaches. "That's not necessary," he snipes. He stands before Bucky, between him and Sam. “What do you remember?” Steve asks, gently.

Bucky considers his new arm, flexing the fingers and turning over the hand. It’s lighter, much lighter, than the previous one, almost the same weight as his flesh and bone arm. When he tests the roll of his shoulder, the seam between metal and muscle doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t feel screws in his shoulder. The arm feels good.

But he can’t remember its attachment.

“I remember..." He doesn't remember. He makes a guess. "Eating fruit by the gorge?”

Sam groans. Bucky had almost forgotten he was there. At the sound, he looks around the room. Sees the crack in the window and the dent in the table. There are no doctors here, not even Shuri.

“I did this,” he says. It’s not a question.

“There was just an incident and no one was..." he selects the next word carefully, "seriously hurt. We shouldn’t have sedated you. It confused you to wake up mid-surgery.” Steve rests a hand against the nape of Bucky’s neck and, for a moment, Bucky trusts everything will be alright. “It’s okay, Buck.”

“It is definitely not okay,” Sam says, addressing Bucky directly. “You just attacked an entire medical staff.”

Bucky finds his head swiveling to Steve, like a child looking at his parent. Steve’s miserable expression confirms Sam’s accusation. Bucky has had another relapse. And he can't even remember it.

“He’s recovering, Sam, it wasn’t his fault that he was—”

“He just attacked the _crown princess_ of _Wakanda_ , Steve. If you don’t think that’s a serious offense then…” Sam throws his hands up, frustrated.

"Is she alright?" Bucky asks, but neither of them hear him. They're too involved in their argument.

While Steve and Sam debate what to do with Bucky, Natasha remains standing in the door. She’s observing Bucky, her eyes tracking each minute movement of his face. He raises his eyebrows at her, and she looks away. She looks towards a machine in the corner of the room, covered in a sheet. It’s a tall, narrow shape that stands vertically. Approximately the size of a standard refrigerator.

Bucky knows instantly what is under that sheet.

“…it’s not his fault! He was scared and confused and—”

“And _nothing,_ Steve. He can be held accountable for his actions. And today he acted poorly. Dangerously, even.”

“He is _not_ dangerous, we—”

“He _is_ dangerous, and by protecting him you are putting everyone in danger, Steve. Including yourself." Sam jams three fingers against Steve's chest, hard enough to move a normal man, but Steve stays stationary. "Especially yourself.”

“He’s right,” Bucky interrupts before Steve really loses it. He makes brief eye contact with Natasha again. “I’m a liability.”

“No, this isn't your fault,” Steve says. “I could see you were confused. I could see you didn't understand what was going on. We should have waited. We could have—” 

Bucky silences him with a shake of his head. “I’m always confused, Steve. And when I’m confused I’m dangerous. I can admit that.”

They stare at each other. Steve is clearly calculating how he can make Bucky see, make him understand things from his perspective. But that’s the problem. Steve can only see it from his own perspective and no threat is greater than his loyalty to Bucky.

Somehow, that’s even more dangerous than Bucky himself.

“Alright,” Steve says finally, exasperated. “What do you want to do?”

Bucky nods towards the machine in the back, the oblong shape looming like a ghost under its sheet. “That’s a cryotank, right?”

It's as if the air has left the room. Steve’s eyes widen. “Nat, Sam, leave,” he says, his voice very low. Bucky knows he pitches his voice to its lowest octave when he’s trying to keep it from trembling.

As they shuffle out, Bucky and Steve stare at each other, like they've stared at each other so many times before. Bucky usually is the first to fold, but not today. Today he's going to make Steve see reason. When the door closes behind Nat and Sam, Bucky sighs and sags into a chair.

“I know you don’t like the idea of this.”

“We can take care of you,” Steve says, clearly having practiced this in his head. “Things have been going _fine._ Sam’s just…”

“Worried about you,” Bucky finishes. He looks back to the cryotank, still obscured in its sheet. “You know, I used to look forward to cryo.”

“Don’t say that…” 

“I did,” Bucky insists. “It was cool and quiet. Nothing hurt in cryo. And when I came out, I’d feel…” _More compliant._ “Better.”

Steve shakes his head, but he’s looking at the cryotank too. Finally, he asks, “Is this really what you want? Really, Bucky? You want to go into cryo? Because if you want it, I'll do it. But if you're asking for cryo because you feel like we have no other choice...”

"We don't have any other choice," Bucky says.

"We do. We could--"

“I can’t trust my own mind,” Bucky says lightly. He smiles up at Steve, but loses the smile as the truth of what he’s said sinks in. He can’t trust his own mind.


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

“And I don’t feel nothing at all.  
And you can’t feel nothing small…  
Oh, Ophelia you’ve been on my mind since the flood.  
Oh, Ophelia, heaven help a fool who falls in love.”  
  
-The Lumineers, “Ophelia”

* * *

 

 

They agree to wait one more night before Bucky goes into cryo. Steve insists on it, “just in case Bucky changes his mind.” Bucky knows that he isn’t going to change shit, but he can’t break that to Steve.

Steve. Steve, who gently removed the arm when they agreed it would be best not to further weaponize Bucky. Steve, who followed Bucky closely to their room and sat against the bathroom door while he showered. Steve, who lingers in his room now, cracking his knuckles with his thumbs, looking lost.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Bucky promises, but his hand shakes as he gets dressed for bed. He can’t get his shirt over his head, keeps getting it caught up on the sharp of his elbow. He sighs in frustration. “A little help?” 

Steve huffs, a soft fond sound, and pulls the shirt over Bucky’s head and tugs it down to his hips. Then he closes his arms around his waist, tucking his face between Bucky’s shoulder blades. Bucky folds a hand over Steve’s knuckles. Steve holds his breath against Bucky’s back.

Bucky learned a long time ago that the best way to manage pain of any nature is through deep breathing.

“Breathe, buddy. I’m not going nowhere.”

“Double negative,” Steve says. His breath is hot through Bucky’s t-shirt.

Bucky groans and rolls his eyes, but in some languages that’s love. “Fine. I’m not going _anywhere_ ," he over-emphasizes. "If you miss me, you'll know where to find me. Convenient, really. I’m making this easier on you.”

“I never wanted you to be easy,” Steve says. “I wanted you to be free.”

“I am free. Free enough to make this decision, anyway.”

Steve releases him, defeated. They've been arguing this for hours, rehashing the same debate points to the point of exhaustion. “Can I sleep in here tonight?”

“I’ll even let you sleep in the bed.”

 

\---

 

That night, Steve keeps Bucky up with his nightmares. Steve sleeps face down, arms wrapped tight around his pillow. He’s slept like this since he was a little boy, face stuffed so deep into his pillow that he’d nearly smother himself. Even as a grown man, Steve wakes up with the scrunch of pillow creases indented into his flushed cheeks.

When the nightmares twitch the muscles in Steve’s back, Bucky lays a hand between his shoulder blades and rubs slow circles over his spine. When his face crumples miserably, Bucky strokes his hair back. He used to hold Steve’s face in both hands, shaking him until he woke up.

Now, when Steve says Bucky’s name in his sleep, Bucky presses their foreheads together and waits for morning. He’ll have plenty of time to sleep in the morning.

 

\---

 

Seeing the cryotank doesn’t wrack Bucky with the instinctual fear he anticipated. The Soviet cryotank was a hulking chunk of metal that the Americans never bothered to update. Shuri has designed a white pod, clean and nonthreatening like all Wakandan tech.

They ran tests on his memory, conducted a physical checkup, and she’s asked him to remember three words: triangle, orange, and eagle.

Steve is standing near the door with both arms crossed tight over his chest, lips pressed tight together. Even now, as Bucky unwraps the cloth from around his shoulders and strips into his tank and sweats for cryo, Steve remains silent.

He was silent all throughout the morning, as Bucky packed away his things for safe keeping. They haven’t spoken since last night, and Bucky is half-certain that they won’t exchange anymore words before he’s frozen.

Steve is angry with him, and Bucky is too proud to admit that he’s scared. 

Since HYDRA routinely stored the asset in cryo for the weekend, they’ve decided to only freeze Bucky for two days, as a test. Shrui re-explains this to them, as well as the precise science behind the cryotank. She isn’t wearing a lab coat, and she never approaches Bucky. She's learning from past mistakes, then.

Shuri opens the cryotank for him. Bucky repeats the words he’s supposed to remember--triangle, orange, eagle--trying to tamp down his panic. He steps in backward. Unlike the Soviet tank, this one fits around him snugly, and he leans back into cushioning. Like satin in a coffin.

“Are you ready?” 

Bucky nods, unable answer verbally. He doesn’t look back towards Steve, but Shuri does. She nods to him, affirming that it’s time to begin.

The door closes, and Bucky is breathing fast. He promised himself he wouldn’t make this harder for Steve, but when cold begins to fill the tank, his eyes fly open and he looks for Steve through the window. Panicked.

Bless him, Steve is standing right there.

Bucky smiles at him. He presses his fingertips against the glass, and condensation collects between his fingers. Steve lifts his own hand, matching Bucky’s.

“Your hand is bigger than mine, now,” Bucky says. Frost is gathering around his eyelashes.

“What?” Steve asks. He sounds underwater through the glass.

Bucky doesn’t get a chance to repeat himself. There is a quick flash of freeze, and then nothing. It's terrible to admit, but nothing feels pretty good.

 

\---

 

For what it’s worth, Bucky prefers the Wakandan cryotank. When he’s thawed two days later, the process isn’t gradual like the Soviet tank. It’s instant, like waking up all at once. He steps down from the tank, bracing himself on the open door. He looks around the room. 

“Where’s Steve?”

“He's in the building," Shuri says, holding a tablet and standing a distance away from Bucky. "I thought it might be best to run some tests before allowing him to visit. Would you be more comfortable if he were here?”

Bucky blinks. His eyelashes are wet from melted frost, but he doesn’t feel cold. His body is far away. Someone else’s problem.

“Sergeant Barnes?” Shuri prompts, tapping down some notes into her tablet without looking down at the screen. “Would you prefer if Captain Rogers were here?”

Decisions are impossible. It isn’t that Bucky is apathetic, he wants Steve here, but isn’t sure if that’s the right choice. If he's even capable of making choices, it was trained out of him so long ago.

So, he defers to authority. Shuri is a doctor and believes that Steve shouldn’t be here. She knows better than Bucky. 

He shakes his head. “You’re right. Tests first.”

“Do you remember the words I told you?” 

“Rectangle, apple, eagle,” Bucky says, looking around the room, but not finding what he needs. Once he’s scanned the entirety, he realizes he was looking for Steve.

Shuri taps some more notes into her tablet. She’s got a good poker face, but there a line of consternation between her brows.

She runs some more tests, consistently confirming that Bucky is ready to be touched before she approaches him. Her hands are warm on his forearm as she draws blood from the pocket of his elbow. He thinks that maybe the slide of the needle would have been too much for him before the cryotank, but his body doesn’t really belong to him anymore. It doesn’t matter what happens to it.

“I would love to get an MRI scan of your brain, but if you’re not comfortable…”

Bucky shrugs. He’s very comfortable. Even as he gets into the machine, even as the coils rattle, he feels total calm. Almost an absence of any feeling at all.

 

\---

 

Steve and Shuri talk outside the medical room while Bucky sits patiently on the examining table. Through the window, he can see Steve casting frequent glances to him. Shuri is showing him something on her tablet and Steve's expression is never pleased with what he sees there. If Bucky put some effort into it, he could read their lips, but doesn’t see any reason to. They’ll make the right decision for him. 

Shuri is midway through a sentence when Steve bursts through the door. She looks anxiously to Bucky, but she has no reason to. “Captain Rogers, I think we should discuss this further—”

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, ignoring Shuri and kneeling in front of Bucky. “How are you feeling?”

 _Compliant._ “Better,” Bucky says. “You alright?”

Steve does not look alright. Nowhere near alright, even. He’s got heavy shadows under his eyes, and he hasn’t shaved. He might even be wearing the same clothes that he wore when they froze Bucky.

Bucky sighs. “The whole point of this was to help you take care of yourself.” He flicks the tip of Steve’s nose. “You’re messing up the mission.” Too late, he corrects, “Messing up the plan,” and Steve catches the misstep.

He looks back to Shuri. “This isn’t working. It was worth a try, but it isn’t working.”

“It’s the very first time we’ve tried cryostasis, Captain.” Shuri is diplomatic, but Bucky senses that she is rapidly losing her patience with Steve. 

“I just woke up, Steve,” Bucky agrees, taking Shuri's side. “Let’s give it some time before we declare it a failure.”

“You failed the memory test, and now you’re acting…”

Bucky raises an eyebrow, challenging Steve to finish that sentence. He doesn’t. He looks down, abashed.

“How about,” Shuri suggests, “You two go for a walk?”

Bucky looks over Steve, catches the angry clench of his jaw and the way he inhales through his mouth to exhale through his nose. Like a bull.

“What if we sparred instead?” he suggests.

  

\---

 

“So,” Bucky says, fist up to protect his face. He only has the one arm, but doubts it’ll be much of a disadvantage. “Where are Natasha and Sam?”

Steve makes a swing for his chest, and Bucky springs back easily. “Back in the States, there’s some sort of issue in DC.”

Bucky lands two quick hits to Steve’s middle, light taps. He bounces back before Steve can return the hit. “They split pretty quickly.”

“We had a disagreement.”

“Wonder what about…” Bucky says, ribbing Steve.

He expects Steve to laugh or at least smile, but he doesn’t.  He seizes Bucky by the arm and flips him over his head to suplex him to the ground, intensifying their light sparring. Bucky’s back hits the mat with an impact that shakes the whole room. He stares up at Steve, dazed but not aggressive.

Bucky extends his arm and Steve helps him back up. Steve almost looks disappointed that Bucky didn’t retaliate. That Bucky didn’t lose his cool.

“Do you dream in cryo?”

Bucky shakes his head, getting back into a defensive stance. Maybe he is at a bit of disadvantage. He’ll have to be smarter.

“No. It’s like blinking. Just colder.”

“Is that why you wanted to go back?” Steve is circling him slowly, planning his next move. There's something unhinged about his expression. “Because you don’t want to dream?”

“Maybe that’s part of it.” Lightning fast, Bucky drops to the ground and swipes at his ankles. Steve has always been careless about his legs and he goes down hard. Bucky props his head up on the triangle of his elbow and hand, grinning at Steve across the floor. “But I’m also safer after cryo. Clearly.”

Steve winces, rolling up into standing. Bucky follows him up.

“What if we just…ran away?”  
  
Somehow, Bucky knows that Steve has asked him this before. But he can’t tell if this was an offer from the present, or from their youth.

“To where?” he says. “Where could we possibly go where I won’t hurt people, and we won’t be found?”

Indulging this fantasy was the wrong move; Steve is getting hopeful now, Bucky can read it in the sweetness of his eyes. He lowers his hands and steps toward Bucky. “We don’t have to settle down. We could be nomadic, and—”

Bucky bends his knee up to the waist and kicks him flat-footed in the chest. Steve goes down again, looking up to Bucky with confusion, but not fear. What a damn moron.

He crouches down next to him. “There’s no version of this story where we run off together, and everything is fine. No version where we get to go home and be ourselves.”

Steve opens his mouth to argue.

“ _Unless_ ,” Bucky says, cutting him off. “You let me get better. Even if it hurts us both. You think you can hurt a little longer, Steve?” 

Steve doesn’t have to think this over. “I can always hurt more, Buck.”

It’s not quite an answer to the question.

 

\---

 

The next time Bucky comes out of cryo, it isn’t for long. Just long enough to ask for Steve and for Shuri check his vitals. Steve isn’t here, Shuri tells Bucky. It’s too hard for Steve to see him like this.

Bucky wants to ask, “See me like what?” but maybe it doesn’t matter. His handlers know what’s best for him, and he can comply with orders. 

Still, he misses Steve. He’s the last thing he thinks of going into cryo, and the first thing he remembers coming out.

This time, he remembers six words perfectly (triangle, orange, eagle, water, Brooklyn, boot) and he doesn’t bristle when Shuri applies a topical antibiotic to his shoulder. This is all improvement, and Shuri is visibly pleased with herself.

But when Shuri offers to take him for a walk around the hospital, Bucky refuses. He’d rather just go back to sleep.

 

\---

 

One day, Bucky is taken out of cryo in the dark, and that itself is strange. Shuri always fills the medical room with light so that Bucky can come awake to daylight. Like a normal person waking from slumber. A hand closes around his mouth, smothering his confused protest.

It’s not enough to reason to fight, and Bucky can’t find the adrenaline to propel his muscles into offense. He blinks the frost from his eyes and finds that he’s looking at Steve. Steve’s hand is around his mouth.

“We need to get out of here,” Steve murmurs, dropping his hand once he can trust that Bucky won't scream. He has a hoodie and a blanket, and Bucky lets Steve dress him like a child.

“Are we in danger?” Bucky whispers, matching Steve’s volume. “Where is the doctor?” 

Steve shakes his head, helping Bucky step out of the tank. “We're not in danger, neither is she, but we need to move quickly.”

He’s got the case with Bucky’s prosthetic in it. Bucky’s legs aren’t working quite right, as if he’s been improperly thawed. Doctors are moving through the hall, unconcerned. All this strikes Bucky as odd. Something is wrong, something that Steve isn't telling him.

Bucky pauses, unsure how to doubt Steve. “Steve…”

Something slams against the glass of the door. It startles them both, but it’s just Shuri. She cups her hands around her eyes and presses her face against the glass. When she sees Steve and Bucky, she slams a fist on the glass and rips open the door.

She comes in pointing an accusatory finger at Steve. “I knew you would be here. This is _not_ how cryostasis works, Captain Rogers. You can’t just break him out now.” 

Bucky retreats backward toward the cryotank, but Steve has his bicep gripped in his fist. He hauls him back out.

“I appreciate everything you and your country has done for us,” Steve says, “but I think it’s time we left.”

“I understand,” Shuri says, “and you are free to leave at anytime. But right now we need to stabilize Sergeant Barnes immediately.”

“There’s a difference between stable and catatonic.”

Bucky snorts, “Thanks for that, Steve.”

Steve’s hand tightens on Bucky’s bicep, leaving bruises under his fingertips. Bucky doesn't really register the pain.

“You’re not helping.”

“Neither are you,” Bucky rips his arm back. “You need to get with the program or this mission is going to fail.”

Steve's face is alight with Bucky's poor phrasing. “Your recovery isn’t a mission!”

“Well, maybe missions are all I can do, Steve!” Bucky spits. He’s angry. Really angry, a pure fury that sets fire to his skin. He can’t remember the last time he felt a rage like this. And it feels good to pour it all out onto Steve. “Maybe this is what I am now, and it’ll just have to be enough for you.”

“No,” Steve says. His eyes are rimmed red. “It’s not like that…”

“Kinda sounds like it's like that, pal. Kinda sounds like I’m not enough for you.” 

“You are, Buck,” Steve says. “You are enough. You can’t imagine how happy I was when I found you with HYDRA—”

“When you found me with HYDRA, I complied with orders to torture and sexually assault you,” Bucky finishes. “Would your old Bucky have done _that_?”

Steve gapes, stunned into silence. They stare at each other, but this time it's Steve who looks away. Steve who has to turn his head to hide his face from Bucky. Good. Maybe now he'll get with the damn program.

“I want to go back into cryo,” Bucky says to Shuri, his throat waterlogged. “Now, please.”

In a rush, Steve leaves the room. Bucky tries to not to watch him go. He fails.

Shuri prepares the cryotank. She looks to Bucky a little hesitantly, "Ready, Sergeant Barnes?"

"Yes," he says, "I'm ready to comply."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now before you stop reading this fic, please remember my policy on happy endings. I appreciate you all, and thank you so much for reading.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has brief sexual violence.

* * *

“You belong among the wildflowers,  
you belong somewhere close to me,  
far away from your trouble and worries.  
You belong somewhere you feel free.”

-Tom Petty, “Wildflowers”

* * *

 

The year is 1935 and Bucky Barnes is seventeen years old. He was supposed to meet Steve down by the dance hall but has been waiting alone for the last hour. It’s not like Steve to be _this_ late.

Bucky heads towards their apartment. When he passes by the army recruitment office, he sighs and heads into the waiting room. The receptionist stands to greet him, but he waves her away with a polite, “Already got me, miss. I signed up only a few months ago. Just waiting for a friend.”

He waits in an incredibly uncomfortable chair under a poster of a woman dressed like a marine. He's winning a staring contest with Uncle Sam when Steve comes out. He’s got a file and is being followed by a grim-faced recruitment officer. Steve blanches when he sees Bucky.

Bucky stands, slings an arm around Steve’s shoulder, and plucks that file out of his hand. He opens it up to see the rejection stamp inside. This time, Steve’s used the pseudonym “Steven Buchanan.” Bucky flushes a bit and tucks the file under his left arm. “You were supposed to meet me by the dance hall. This isn’t the dance hall, pal.”

Steve ducks out from under his arm, scowling and marching ahead without acknowledging anything Bucky just said. Bucky gives the recruitment officer a shrug, _What can you do?_ and follows Steve out of the office. 

Without speaking, Steve storms ahead several feet, filled with the hot outrage of a man who knows better than the system. Bucky watches the hunch of his shoulders under his overcoat, the miserable dip of his head.

They’re unlocking the door to their shared apartment—what will be solely Steve’s apartment after Bucky’s deployed--when Bucky decides he's had enough. He breaks the silence.

“I know you hate hearing it…” he starts.

“So, don’t say it.”

“…but maybe getting rejected from the army is for the best.”

That must be just about enough for Steve. He makes a swing for Bucky, which is narrowly dodged. But the next swing, angled directly for his face, lands square on Bucky's jaw. Steve is a little guy, but he’s got a mean left hook when he’s so inclined.

“Fuck!” Bucky spits out a glob of blood and saliva. “That fucking _hurt,_ you asshole!”

There was a crunch against his jaw on the impact that he knows was the metacarpals in Steve’s hand splintering. Now he cradles it against his chest, scowling like he's still up for a fight. Bucky sighs.

“Did that break your hand?” He reaches out to see it.

“It’s fine, Bucky,” Steve says, shoving past him to get into the apartment.  “Just leave me alone for one second, would you?”

Usually, Bucky has infinite reserves of patience for Steve. But first Bucky waited an hour outside in the Brooklyn cold for him and now he’s being a shit. Bucky nags. “If you broke your hand you need to see a doctor about it.”

Steve is heading for his room, but Bucky blocks the hallway with the bulk of his body. Steve looks up at him. His face is red and wet with upset, with embarrassment. He’s never had a high tolerance for humiliation, especially from Bucky.

“Let me _go,_ Bucky.”

Bucky wraps his arms around his small friend, pulling him to his chest. Steve fights him, of course he fights him, shoves his good hand up against his shoulders, thrashes his body from side to side. But Bucky clamps down on him. Bucky holds on.

“Quit it,” Bucky says, squeezing around him tighter. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“Fuck you,” Steve says, and swearing always sounds a little comical coming from his mouth, but Bucky has the decency not to laugh at him.

Instead, Bucky rests his forehead against the top of Steve’s head. Steve hair smells like Bucky’s soap. Bucky’s jaw still sings from where Steve broke his knuckles on it, but he can’t imagine loving anyone more.

Finally, Steve stops fighting Bucky. Finally, he slings an arm around his waist to return the embrace. He tucks his face into Bucky’s shoulder, at the crook of his neck. His breath there is hot and wet. Crying, probably, but he’ll never tell Bucky.

That's fine; there are lots of things that Bucky will never tell Steve. Like watching him sleep at night. Like draping his arm around his shoulder so that their hips can bump. Like loving him so hard they could both burst.

“I just want to help,” Steve mumbles.

“Yeah, I know, buddy.” Bucky rests his chin on top of his head. “Me too.”

 

\---

 

When Bucky wakes up warm from a dream, he knows instantly what Steve has done.

First, he absorbs their environment: the beat up leather interior of a pickup truck driven by Captain America himself. Bucky occupies the passenger seat, and he’s wrapped in a fleece blanket. There’s a baseball cap on his head, and Bucky tugs it down into place.

Outside, there are cornfields. A big, blue sky. 

Bucky stretches his arm up until his fingers brush the roof of the truck cabin, laughing. “Oh, this is a terrible idea.”

Steve glances over to him, expression guarded. “I was half worried I’d overdosed you.”

Bucky shifts in his seat to lean against the window and stretch out his legs. The glass is cool against his temple despite the sun shining on the cornstalks outside the car. They're someplace in the midwest, he'd guess.

“So, you kidnapped me.” 

Steve nods.

“Sedated me without knowing the proper dosage.”

He hesitates, but nods again. 

“And abducted me to…” 

“We’re in the States,” Steve says, readjusting his tight grip on the wheel. There are no cars around them for miles on this two-lane highway, but Steve keeps his eyes on the road. “I understand if you’re angry and don’t want—”

“Oh, I want to talk about this,” Bucky laughs. “How did you get me all the way from Africa to America without me waking up?”

He knows that his tolerance for sedatives is higher than most. Maybe higher than anyone's, including Steve's. Bucky’s built up a resistance to it over the years. It used to drive the American techs crazy.

“I flew us in a stolen quinjet. You were in the cryotank for most of it.” Steve nods back towards the bed of the truck. “Truck’s also stolen, for what it’s worth.”

In the rearview window, Bucky can make out the outline of the cryotank under the black tarp, strapped down with bungee cords. He can't see what else is back there, but guesses that Steve has stockpiled provisions as well.

Bucky whistles softly, nearly impressed. “Grand theft Barnes.”

When he shifts back to front facing, Steve is watching him apprehensively. “I thought you’d be furious.

“Oh yeah," Bucky assures him, "I’m pissed. This brings reckless self-endangerment to a whole new level.”

Steve works his jaw. Bucky can hear his molar creak together. “But?”

“But,” Bucky sighs, “I’ve followed you through dumber danger before.”

“That’s it?” Steve says, incredulous.

“That’s it," Bucky affirms. "Good enough for me."

If Steve thinks he can do better than a team of Wakandan therapists and medical staff, then Bucky has to at least let him try. He doesn’t really have a choice anyway.

  

\---

 

They spend that first night in a motel. It’s truly a motor-hotel, the kind where they can drive up to the room and see the truck from their room's window. Bucky draws the curtains closed, but plans to occasionally peer through the gap to check on the truck and the cryotank. Never know when they might need it.

At the counter, the receptionist stares at Bucky's missing arm and gives them a dubious look when they request a room together. Steve got them a room with separate beds, but when they get to the dingy room, they’ve been given a double.

That will never work; Steve is so big that he’ll hang off the ends of a double at all sides. And it’s not like Bucky is any smaller. Bucky grabs two pillows from the bed and tosses them on the moldy carpet.

“I call floor,” he says, already crashing down. Whenever he went on overnight missions as the Winter Soldier, he was expected to take the floor. In all honesty, he might sleep better there than in a bed.

But Steve isn’t having any of it. “I can take the floor, Bucky. You’re healing.”

“I _was_ healing. Now I’m escaping.” 

Steve throws his hands up. “Fine. But I’m not sleeping on the bed.”

Bucky shrugs. “Suit yourself.” He pats the space next to him. “Pop a squat, soldier.” 

Steve narrows his eyes at him, and his pissed expression is so comical that it’s nearly worth all this shit. Almost, but not quite.

He turns around and locks himself in the bathroom. The shower runs immediately, but Bucky can hear him muttering to himself over the spray.

Bucky flicks on the television to block out the noise and curls up to go to sleep.

 

\---

 

The year is 2000-and-something and the asset has performed poorly on a mission. Worse than poorly, it has  _failed_ the mission and it is not  _allowed_ to fail a mission. Ever. It can’t remember what went wrong, what it did, but that doesn’t matter to Lieutenant Rollins. It will be punished whether it remembers or not.

They’re in the safehouse. The asset desperately needs to requisition maintenance; it has a broken femur, a dislocated jaw, and internal bleeding. The lieutenant has his boot on the asset’s broken face, stepping it down into the ground.

“Fucking useless,” Rollins says, leaning down on his foot.

The asset’s jaw is a white-hot knot of agony under Rollins' boot. And it is so very ashamed of itself. It wants to disappear into the low-pile carpet. It wants to vanish into nothing, into the cryotank. It wishes it never even had a body.

“What the hell happened back there?” 

The asset can’t remember. It can’t even remember the mission. “I don’t remember, Lieutenant.” 

Rollins lifts his boot, but only to kick the asset in the ribcage. He’s an enormous man, and the steel-toed kicks land hard against its tender ribs. The asset tries to curl in, protecting itself.

Commander Rumlow appears from the kitchen, double-fisting Eggo waffles. “Why fuck him up when we can just fuck him?” He sucks the syrup off his thumb tip. “We’ve got a few hours to kill before the debrief.”

Typically, when HYDRA agents propose the asset’s sexual function, the calm from cryo spreads over its mind like a blanket of snow. Now, the asset’s brain is alight with panic. With the inherent wrongness of what is about to happen to it.

It doesn’t _want_ to be of use. It doesn’t _like_ being of use. 

“Ready to comply?” Rumlow says, his pants are already undone at the zip.

He’s advancing and will use the asset’s broken mouth first while Rollins takes it from the back. Rollins will hold it by the hips, so he can control the pace, and neither of them will care if it can breathe. The asset will beg to come, just like it always does. And they’ll laugh at it, just like they always do.

“No,” Bucky says. “Christ, no.”

_Bucky?_

\---

  _Bucky?_

“Bucky? Bucky!” Steve is shaking him by the shoulder.

Bucky springs awake all at once, searching the room for Rumlow and Rollins. They are _here._ They were just _here_ and Bucky needs to find them immediately. Need to protect them both. The bathroom door is open; they could be in there. There are cars passing by outside; they could be masking the sound of their intrusion. The coils of the radiator heater rattle _pop pop pop whump whump whump._ The television is still on, blaring loud nonsense and laugh tracks. 

The cold adrenaline coursing through his blood feels like mania, like he’s on the verge of— 

Steve wraps his arms around him, tight and restraining. He tucks his chin over Bucky’s head and rocks him back and forth. Back and forth. In the dark enclosure of Steve’s arms, Bucky can't be overwhelmed by his environment. He can hear his own heartbeat, smell the mold of the carpet, and the soap in Steve’s hair. They aren’t in the HYDRA safehouse, but the motel room that Steve rented.

Rumlow and Rollins are both dead.

“Okay,” Bucky says, muffled by Steve’s chest. He pats his back twice. “I’m okay. Let me out.”

Steve releases him slowly. “Nightmare?” he guesses.

“Got it in one,” Bucky says. He leans back on his arm and takes a few bracing breaths. There are no hands on him, nothing inside of him. Not even the bolts for his arm. But he still feels them inside him. Can feel Rollins' breath crawling over his spine and Rumlow's eyes greedily absorbing each new humiliation they inflict.

More than anything, Bucky desperately craves the peaceful void of the cryotank. And Steve tracks his longing stare out to the truck, to the tank in its bed. He winces, sucking air in through his clenched teeth.

“I can bring it in,” Steve offers, “I stole the manual, we could—”

“No,” Bucky says, standing slowly. He feels like a puppet pulled up by the strings. “But let’s hit the road. I can’t sleep here anymore.”

Steve nods, helping Bucky balance himself when they’re both vertical. He leads them out into the dark, crisp twilight. The sun is coming up now over the flat plains, dimming the stars in the slowly bluing sky. Bucky takes a moment to let it spread out above him, the whole big world.

“Where are we headed anyway?” he asks as he crawls into the truck. The cabin is cold and Steve tosses the fleece blanket over him. He starts up the engine and the entire cabin rumbles with its pistons.

“A safehouse,” Steve answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to take a break from updating this weekend so I can get a few chapters ahead. Thanks for sticking with me!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all had a lovely weekend. I'm excited to share these next few chapters with you.

* * *

“Self is only an idea, a mortal idea…I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.” 

-Jack Kerouac

* * *

  

The safehouse ends up being a log cabin in the Rocky Mountains, high above the tree line where the air is thin and cold. It’s the kind of air that cuts down the windpipe, like drinking cold water into the lungs.

Steve drives the truck off road toward the cabin, but parks nearly a mile away so that they have to carry everything they need on their backs through the trees and up the slope. Sweat pours along Bucky’s spine despite the mountain chill. When Bucky looks over to him, Steve’s face and neck are flushed. He’s got the cryotank _and_ its generator slung by bungee cords over his shoulders. Each step he takes drives his feet down an inch into the dust, weighed by the excess.

Steve’s strength is still, undeniably, a marvel. Bucky has seen him bust concrete with his bare foot. He has seen Steve heave up the backend of a tank, throw a moving motorcycle over his head, haul down a helicopter. 

Since the forties, the newfound might had made Bucky simultaneously proud and anxious. Worried that they took away a fragility to Steve Rogers that made him so damn special in the first place.

As it turns out, he was wrong; Steve is more fragile than ever. 

They come up on the cabin just as their bodies lag with the weight of their load. It is a small huddle of logs amongst the looming pine trees, barely even a room. Inside, there is no plumbing, but a deep metal basin for washing near a wood burning stove. There is a single narrow cot that they’ll alternate sleeping on. And that’s it. No windows to peer into, no closets to crouch in, no backdoor to creep through.

Bucky loves it instantly.

Satisfying some nesting instinct, he unpacks their provisions: four truly giant jars of peanut butter, ten loaves of bread, can after can of soup, can after can of beans, seven pounds of ground beef, four crates of water, pancake mix, syrup. The rest is back in the truck.

Given Steve’s excessive load, Bucky also carried their personal belongings: just one duffle bag each. He unpacks his now, unsure what Steve salvaged for him.

Clothes, mostly. Big, heavy coats and flannels that they didn’t need in the warmth of Africa. There are some books that Bucky started back in Wakanda. None of his weapons—not his switchblade or gun—and, when Bucky feels the outside of Steve’s bag, there’s no protection there either. Just the shield and the prosthetic arm then.

The arm. Bucky turns his attention to its case now, where it leans benignly against the cryotank.

Steve comes in then, holding a hatchet. “There’s a dead tree out there that we can fell for wood. But it requires two of us and…” He catches Bucky’s eyes on the tank, even when he looks away a split-second later. “Everything okay in here?”

Bucky yanks out a down jacket from his duffle, ties off the left sleeve so it won’t dangle at his side, and shoulders it. “Everything’s good. Let’s do it.”

Outside, the dark pine trees carve straight up into the sky and sunlight, making cathedral glass of the sunset. Steve stalks toward the dead tree which stretches around a hundred feet into the air. He looks up at it, running a hand over the side as he assesses.

Steve was tense the entire drive here, and a fraction of that anxiety still hitches his shoulders. It’s as if he’s been holding his breath ever since Bucky woke up. In the woods, everything is so silent and still, filled only with the sound of their hushed panting, their boots crunching through the rock and dust, the wind that shifts the bending pine trees. It's just them, now.

Bucky feels something like penitence. 

They fell the tree in near silence, not needing to communicate verbally. Steve has already hacked away a wedge in the trunk. Bucky wraps a rope near the base to guide the fall away from the cabin. Steve presses the flat of his foot against the trunk and, with a tremendous creaking groan, the tree crashes to the ground.

Once it’s on the ground, Bucky realizes that, for the past hour, he has thought of nothing. Not HYDRA, not Steve, not even himself.

They split wood, taking turns with the hatchet and carrying the load back to the cabin in their arms. They don’t make firewood of the whole tree, just what they need for the night. Even that is a sizable stack that they line up in the stacks by the door. They cover the wood with the tarp that covered the cryotank, protecting it from precipitation.

“We’ve done this before,” Bucky guesses, when they’re finished.

Steve nods, wiping dust off his palms onto his jeans. “In France. During the war. Camped out a lot back then.” He looks up to the night sky spreading out above them. “We should get inside; it’s getting dark out.”

Inside the cabin is pitch dark and freezing cold until they get the fire going. Bucky finds himself falling silent and complacent in the icy darkness, by force of habit.  Steve toasts bread over the stove, watching Bucky and noticing his mood.

“You’ve been quiet today,” he says, spreading peanut butter over the toasted bread. “What’re you thinking about?”

Bucky turns his head away. “Not right now, Steve,” he says. But he extends his hand for the food. Steve gives it to him without compromise.

 

\---

 

That night, he has a dream that is more emotion than memory. He dreams of sharing a tent in the mountains with Steve, that same dream where he curls around Steve and feels their combined warmth radiate between them. But this dream is different. Because, suddenly he’s pressed against him, the long arcs of their bodies easy together.

The wind and sleet blow outside, but Bucky can’t feel the chill through the canvas. He can’t feel anything but Steve in the cradle of his body.  

Bucky’s mouth roams over his skin, teeth finding the crest of his clavicle where it presses against the edge of his shoulder. He mouths a kiss just under Steve’s ear, and the man shudders all over. 

“You aren’t ready for this,” Steve says, voice low and gravelly. “You should wake up.”

Ever obedient, Bucky flinches awake onto the ground of the cabin. He’s curled up near the fire, bundled in blankets and coats to stave off the freezing cold. Behind him, Steve dozes on the cot. He's snoring, a low rumble deep in his chest.

Bucky doesn’t know what the hell to do with that kind of dream, so he does nothing. He feeds another log into the flame and falls asleep watching it blacken and blaze.

 

\---

 

The days trickle by slowly in the cabin. They chop wood, fell the dead trees that are too close to the cabin, chop more wood. Bucky finds it’s easy to lose himself in the physical labor, that there’s stability in toil. And there is always more work to do in the mountains.

But his mind is getting worse. Without wipes, without cryo, Bucky’s brain leaps forward and back in time, through the different versions of himself. Some mornings, he wakes as the asset and, though the asset can still remember Steve and where they are, it is erratic without missions. 

So, Steve gives it missions.

He has the asset build a fire pit behind the cabin, carefully selecting flat rocks to surround the pit. The asset, in its fastidiousness, selects rocks that lock together until it has paved a clearing. When the asset finishes that task, Steve has it carve benches from felled trees to surround the ring of laid stone. They split and strip the logs together, and when Bucky wakes up himself the next day, he mocks Steve for using the asset for landscaping. They laugh together and don’t address the tension strung out between them. Bucky doesn't mention the dream, doesn't allow himself to think about it lest it confuse the asset.

Things go well, for a while.

 

\---

 

It is now late October and they’re preparing to go hunting. Bucky and Steve have uncovered a mutual newfound passion for survivalism that has them delving deeper into the woods, experimenting with the limits of their abilities. Yesterday, they carved spears from rock and stick, binding them with strips of bark. They joked that they’ll hunt like cavemen, and now they plan for a pursuit of the mossy elk that stalk the valley below.

Steve is already outside the cabin, preparing a daypack for their trek, and Bucky runs back inside to grab them both coats.

He unzips Steve’s duffle and yanks out a down jacket haphazardly. As he wrests it free, some of Steve’s stuff falls out with it. Plastic bottles rattle and topple to the floor. Three of them. Three, enormous pill bottles.

 _Pill bottles_. He loathes pills.

Somewhere between Bucky and the asset, he re-evaluates every meal that Steve has cooked for him, every unscrewed bottle of water that he emptied without question. He ate and drank it all without question, without hesitation. And all this time Steve has been _drugging_ him.

Bucky trusted him. The asset trusted him. 

“We gotta get going,” Steve says, coming into the cabin. “We’re losing daylight out there…”

The asset has him up against the wall by the throat. Steve’s eyes are wide with genuine surprise, his face flushed bright red. If the asset had its metal hand, Rogers’ windpipe would have been crushed by now.

“Bucky,” Steve rasps, pulling at the asset’s hand locked around his throat. “What’s wrong? What did I do?”

He’s not fighting. He almost never fights the asset, even when his face is purpling and his eyes are bulging from want of air. Steve will never fight the asset, loves the asset because the asset shares the same body as Bucky. So, it could slaughter him right here without a hint of resistance. And it frustrates the asset, fills it full of anxious rage because…

Because the asset doesn’t want Rogers to _die,_ it just wants Rogers to _fight._

It drops him to the floor and kicks a bottle of pills towards Steve as he splutters and gasps for breath. Steve reaches out for it, reads the label, and sits up.

“What are these?” the asset demands. Bucky would have let this go by now, would have crumpled like wet paper at the sight of Steve’s eyes misting up. But the asset demands answers, demands truth.

Steve turns the bottle’s label towards it. “Omega 3 fish oil,” he says, “It’s supposed to help with depression and memory loss. I put it in our soup.” 

Fish oil is more vitamin than drug. _Our soup_. It’s better than the asset anticipated, but its sense of betrayal isn’t sated. Steve is slipping substances into its food, doesn't matter what substance it is.

It kicks another pill bottle towards him. “And this one?” 

“St. John’s Wort,” he says, showing the asset the unbroken plastic seal. “I haven’t used these yet. It’s not good for bipolar disorder and—”

The asset kicks the last bottle over, still shaking with the discomfort of being vulnerable, of being taken advantage of. This pill bottle is pharmaceutical orange, the kind that needs a prescription from a doctor. “What about this one? You put this one in my food, too?”

Steve sighs. “It’s an SSRI. Off brand of Zoloft. For my…” He coughs and sits up a little. “For my depression.”

The air goes dry in the cabin. “Shit, Steve. I thought—”

“I should have asked about the fish oil,” Steve says, standing now. The bruises on his throat from the asset’s fingers are fading already. Yellow and green thumbprints, lighter than shadows. “I’m sorry.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say, itching for the cryotank. Without even realizing he’s doing it, Bucky casts a glance to it now, still sitting in the corner, the only thing in the cabin hooked up to the generator. Steve follows his stare there.

“I’m getting more unstable,” he says. “I don’t know if this is safe for you.”

“You’d feel a lot more stable if I didn’t try to slip things into your food without your knowledge.” 

Bucky arches a brow. “Anything else you’re sneaking in?”

“Vitamin D, for both of us. It’s in the bottom of my bag. You can go through it, if you—”

Bucky doesn’t need the permission. He upends the duffle. All of Steve’s clothes, books, and yes, the pills spill out onto the floor. Bucky assesses the bottle, white plastic with a top that comes off easily. He lowers it when he’s assured that they are really just vitamins.

"Just so we're clear, this ends now. I'll take these if you ask me to, but..."

Steve exhales in relief. Bucky realizes now that there was a distinct possibility that he would just leave. That he could still just leave.

He goes through the rest of Steve’s belongings while he looks on. There are books there that Bucky is familiar with but also a compact Bible that Bucky doesn’t recognize. A black, leather bound Bible. It prickles the back of his mind, though, pulling at his memory.

“Was this mine?” he asks, lifting it so Steve can see.

Steve nods, crawling toward him without fear. “I requested it from the Smithsonian and it arrived a few days before we…well, before we fled Wakanda.” He takes it from Bucky’s hands, turning the dimpled leather cover over in his hands. “You got it as a gift for your confirmation, from your mother.” Steve looks over his face, checking for a flicker of recognition that doesn’t ignite. “You were Catholic.”

Bucky nods, but his past theology doesn’t resonate with him. He can only vaguely remember mass, the hard-backed wooden pews, the suffering of Christ in stained glass. This is all that HYDRA left him of God. 

Well, and Steve. Steve, who opens the front cover to show Bucky where he wrote his name in a childish scrawl of block letters. Steve, who searches the gospel of John to find the place where he had scribbled a note to Bucky.

“We were in the trenches, when I wrote this to you.”

He turns the book to show him his neat script in the margins:  _You and me always, Buck._

Bucky reaches out to take it from him. He rubs his thumb over the long-dried ink, fading into a brownish blue, and wonders at how this other life can be so full and so far away. Rotating the Bible back to upright, Bucky reads the scripture next to Steve’s note:

"John 15:13," he says aloud. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I'm obviously not a psychiatrist or a theologian. I'm just a longterm therapy-seeker who went to Catholic school. Thanks for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

* * *

“I love the way you could see the good in everything,  
But do we fuel the fire?  
Closing my eyes, remember how we were like gold.”  
-Vance Joy, “Like Gold”

* * *

 

 

The year is 1930, Bucky Barnes is twelve years old, and his best friend looks strange to him. Maybe strange isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s more like _different_ because Bucky never noticed the way he looked before, but he notices now. 

Bucky knew Steve looked how he looked, skinny with big features on his face, but now he’s hyper aware of _every_ way that Steve looks. He finds himself fixated on the strangest parts of Steve, the parts that he never noticed before. And it’s not a meddling fascination. It’s an all-consuming obsession.

Bucky didn’t know that he could feel an emotion with his whole body until he noticed the fine hairs at the nape of Steve’s neck. Didn’t know that madness was something like pleasure until he saw that there were muscles in Steve’s back between the shoulder blades, working beneath his white undershirt. The sunburned pattern on his calves nearly made Bucky crash his bicycle into a brick wall when he rode behind him on the way to school one day.

And it isn’t like Bucky can even do anything with these fixations, these obsessions, but stew over them. Stew _in_ them. They boil up inside him, roil his stomach, dampen him with sweat, knock his nervy knees.

He knows it’s more than noticing, fears it’s more than fixating, but he doesn’t have any words for what it actually is.

Once, he tried to confess the whole mess of it. He even got into the confessional booth, shut the heavy curtain, and enclosed himself in the incense-fragrant dark with the priest. He had flinched when the father slid open the screen between them. Had crossed himself with tightly straight fingers. Fingers that didn't tremble, but only because he forced them not to.

“Forgive me, Father," he'd whispered into the darkness, "for I have sinned.”

“What are your sins, child?” 

And as he wet his lips to explain how he saw Steve, he couldn’t. Just…couldn’t. Because, when it came down to it, he didn’t repent seeing Steve this way and thus couldn’t confess. Steve deserved to be seen, deserved to be noticed. Even if it was Bucky Barnes himself who had to do it.

And eventually, the decision to see Steve felt right. Uncomfortable at times, especially as he plunged into puberty and hurdled through adulthood with Steve. But right.

Bucky thinks about that now, unfolding the memory with slow fascination, as he watches Steve hike a few yards ahead of him. He’s got all their water and food packed on his back for the day hike, and the provisions bump against his hips as he walks. Steve’s thighs flex in his jeans. They plan to summit today. 

That morning, Steve had suggested that they try something he’d read about online before they’d arrived. The trauma therapy that Bucky had received in Wakanda had an element they could replicate without a doctor.

“Apparently,” Steve had said, reading from a printout of an article like an old man, “the doctor who invented EMDR therapy happened to notice, while walking through the woods, that her own negative emotions lessened as her eyes darted from side to side. She found similar results in patients. I know you’ve been grappling with some tough thoughts, Buck. Maybe a long hike could help?”

Then he’d looked up to Bucky with such unabashed hope, that he had to say yes. Yes, on the condition that he didn’t have to talk while they hiked. Because when Bucky thought about therapy, talk therapy, he couldn’t imagine telling Steve what he had told his doctors.

Now, as they trudge up the ridge along a crater, Bucky has to begrudgingly admit to himself that this is working. That he _wants_ to talk about what’s eating at him. Or, at least, part of what’s eating him.

“Was I very Catholic?” he asks Steve’s back.

“Your family could be,” Steve says, still hiking ahead. “You always complained about Mass, though. Hated sitting still that long.” 

Bucky smiles at that, likes thinking about himself in these terms. Likes being remembered in those terms. “But I went to confession.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, turning at the hip to look Bucky over. As always, his expression is fretful. “Do you want to go to confession now?"

Bucky shrugs, looking away. He wants to ask if the Bucky that Steve knew would want to go to confession. But he doesn’t, can’t dig up that reminder _again_ that the real Bucky isn't here and might never be here; it would ruin this peaceable calm they’ve forged between them.

Sometimes he feels like the dog bringing dead things in from the yard.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve committed some serious mortal sins at this point,” he says, not quite an answer to Steve’s question.

Steve stops completely and treks back down toward Bucky. Bucky stops too, squirming. Without the hike to focus on, Bucky is confronted with the brunt of his sins: Steve crumpled on the floor of a HYDRA cell, incapacitated with drugs. Steve hung up by his arms, screaming for Bucky while the asset looked on impassively. Steve sobbing in restraints, swearing that he _can't do this anymore, Buck, please._ Steve with his mouth pried open by the asset and…

And…

Steve sees him shift his weight from foot to foot, the panic boiling up inside. “Let’s keep going,” he suggests, and they continue walking together.

Bucky scans the trees, the skies, the rocks underfoot, looking for an anchor. Though he can only see the broad of Steve’s back, the forward dip of his head, he knows Steve’s mulling over something. Steve still has something to say.

“I don’t believe in sin,” Steve says after a length, “but from what I understand of the concept, it’s a symptom of free will.”

It’s a nice thought. Steve is full of those.

“I always thought of sin as the way that we hurt others, no matter our intentions,” Bucky starts slowly, bracing himself. “I hurt you, Steve. And you saw what I did for them, how I—” He can’t say it. Even now, he can’t say what he’s done.

“But you never had a choice,” Steve says, the indignation clear in his voice. Bucky is glad that he cannot see the righteousness in his face. “They never let you choose. Sometimes you didn’t even know what you were doing. How can you be held accountable for that?”

“I can submit to punishment for it,” Bucky says. Immediately after it leaves his mouth, he recognizes that it’s something the asset would say. Conditioned into him, then. “I mean,” he grits out, wincing, “punishment is a form of forgiveness. Saying the rosary and all that.”

“You remember praying with a rosary?” Steve says, derailing and unable to keep the naked excitement from his voice. Steve delights in every memory Bucky reclaims from his past, from before HYDRA.

“I remember the way that the beads felt in my hands, between my fingers.”

Bucky’s penitence often came in the form of the rosary, thumbing over the strand of beads between both hands, nose tucked against his knuckles as he whispered into the cup of his palms. He won’t be able to pray like that anymore, not without re-attaching the prosthetic.

“I think the Smithsonian has one of your rosaries. I could request it, get it sent to a PO box down a few miles in El Jebel, and—”

Bucky shakes his head. “I don’t think praying on a rosary will help me atone for what I’ve done.”

They walk in silence for a few yards, Bucky purposefully swinging his gaze across the trail. It helps. He dislikes admitting it, but it helps. 

“I just don’t think you need punishment, Bucky,” Steve blurts, as if he’s unable to prevent the words from pouring out. “You’ve already been punished. Over and over again. You helped me escape. You—"

And Bucky doesn’t know what else to do but laugh, shakily and ragged around the edges. He laughs so hard, it feels like a cough, like vomiting. “You really actually forgive me.”

“No,” Steve says, solemnly. “I don’t.”

Bucky flinches in surprise. Starlings screech in the trees they pass and fly up in mass. He stops to watch them swoop up and then scatter back into the trees. When he turns his attention back to Steve, he’s looking right at him.

“There is nothing to forgive, Bucky,” Steve says. “There’s nothing you’ve done.” 

With careful hands, Steve tries to reach out for him then, perhaps to take Bucky's hand in both of his own. Bucky shoves him away. Steve wants to make this all easy, Steve wants to make this clean. It isn’t clean. It’s a goddamned wreck.

“The asset raped you,” Bucky says frankly, finally, and there’s relief in the telling. "And I'm so sorry." Maybe he’s still Catholic, after all.

Steve doesn’t flinch, just watches Bucky with a steadiness that will never waver.

“I tortured you,” Bucky continues, walking ahead faster and forcing Steve to nearly chase after him. “I put you in that costume when you begged me not to. I locked you in that cell. I answered questions wrong _on purpose_ even though I knew they’d punish you for it. Kept your name a secret just because I wanted it to myself, and I let you suffer for it. I let you suffer all of it. Shouldn’t I be punished for that? Shouldn’t I atone?” 

“Bucky—”

Bucky whips around to face him. “Why wouldn’t you just leave me in the fucking tank where I _belong_? Why can’t you just. Let. Me. Go.”

His voice echoes through the crater; the starlings flee the tree tops again. Dark storm clouds roll in overhead. It always rains in the afternoons in the mountains.

“Because you didn’t belong in there,” Steve says at last, voice unnaturally even. “You belong out here with me.”

He sees Bucky’s disbelieving frown, the protective hunch of his shoulders. Steve contemplates Bucky. Contemplates him even as the clouds break open and rain falls in heavy sheets. Their heads and shoulders dampen, their clothes soak. Steve doesn’t falter, and Bucky waits for judgement. Waits for Steve to be honest.

“And,” Steve says, cracks in the façade creeping through his tone, “I was selfish. I _needed_ you out here with me. I need you, Buck. Any version of you.”

It wasn’t what he expected, total acceptance. Bucky exhales, thinks about that fragile boy in Brooklyn whose bones pressed up against his skin, who was small and delicate and so _angry_ but always seemed to know what was right.

A memory filters through then, disconnected from a context that is just barely out of reach. Steve pressing their foreheads together like they’ve done since they were young. Steve whispering, _Don’t you think I know what’s right?_

And even if Bucky can’t forgive himself, it might be time to move on. For Steve.

They start walking again, through the afternoon rain. Muck oozes up the sides of their boots, but their feet stay dry in their socks. Bucky doesn't mind the wet weight of his shirt on his shoulders; he isn't cold. The storm clouds hang in a thin halo around them, allowing the bright sunlight to pierce through the rain, glistening the air.

“Do you know what I can’t get over about storms in the mountains?” Bucky says, catching up with Steve to walk by his side. “The sun still shines, even the rain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a companion piece to this chapter called, "Ready to Comply" which delves more into Bucky's EMDR therapy. Infinite gratitude to Antivol, who suggested that Bucky might benefit from EMDR.


	12. Chapter 12

* * *

 I am Achilles on a mountain, standing beside the hour glass.  
I am a hero, I am a thief.  
I am a resurrected man.  
And when the time calls upon me, I will know where to go.  
The petals will fall past me as I find my way home.

-The Dead South, “Achilles”

* * *

 

The year is 1946, and Sergeant Bucky Barnes just narrowly avoided death. After a raucous celebration of Steve’s triumphant rescue of the 107th Infantry Regiment, he and Bucky slumped back into their shared tent, exhausted down to their bones.

Typically, they would have separate quarters, since they are both officers, but Bucky doesn’t say a word when Steve follows him into his tent and makes it clear that he intends to stay there tonight. 

Having him in the same space is a balm on Bucky’s aching heart. His imprisonment in Zola's bunker rattled him in a way he's never been before, has him twitchy and scared. Everything under his skin feels wrong, panicky, infected. He can’t settle. For the first time, he isn't sure of himself. For the first time, he recognizes that he is vulnerable.

Celebration feels unearned. Comfort is temporary. Promises of safety prove false. The only center Bucky has is Steve. And if Steve isn’t planning on leaving, then Bucky isn’t about to make him.

Steve is dead-fatigued, but he still undresses fastidiously, facing the tent wall. Bucky watches from the corner of his eye as Steve shucks his coat and hangs it on the post of the cot. Watches as he peels out of the ridiculous spangled Captain America costume, down to his white undershirt and briefs. 

This state of undress is usually where Bucky looks away, but it’s been so long since he’s seen Steve, since he’s felt safe. He can’t resist assessing Steve’s new body, his new largeness. It’s strange seeing his friend like this. Steve is fully capable and assured in his newfound physical health, a privilege that was never available to him until now. It looks good on Steve; it’s what he deserves. 

It’s still strange to Bucky.

He watches the flex of muscles, substantial muscles, bunching between Steve’s shoulder blades—a point of fixation since he was young, now exaggerated by Steve’s transformation—and the bulge of his arms at the biceps. More familiar are the knobs of his spine that ripple under his skin when he bends over to strip off his socks.

Bucky has been strapped to an examining table for the past few weeks, injected with serums that burned him up inside. And Steve is strange, bigger than he should be. But he's still the same man.

Steve rolls his socks and tucks them inside his left boot. It is the best thing that Bucky has ever seen.

When Steve pulls on a threadbare gray shirt,  _Bucky's shirt he’s big enough to fill Bucky’s shirt,_ Bucky looks away and attends to himself. He sits on the cot, barely interested in divesting his own clothing before bed. His body is stiff, achy at the joints and sinews. When he stoops down to pry off his boots, the strain on his hamstrings is a torment.

“Here,” Steve says, kneeling at Bucky’s feet, “Let me help.”

A different Bucky might kick his hands away, insist on doing it himself, but _this_ Bucky is tired. More tired than he's ever been. And Steve’s knuckles brushing against his ankles feel like heaven. Being here with Steve is heaven. 

Steve eases off his boots and socks, wrinkling his nose at the smell. Bucky’s entire body reeks; Zola and his team didn’t exactly attend to Bucky’s hygiene, but his socks and boots give off an almost sickly odor. For a man as invested in his appearance and cleanliness as Bucky is, this is a humiliation almost worse than any other.

“Sorry,” Bucky rasps, “I haven’t taken them off in weeks.”

“Grab the shaving basin,” Steve says, nodding to the trunk.

Bucky obliges, leaning across the cot to fetch the basin and water pitcher. As if he's done it before, Steve cuffs the bottoms of his filthy trousers. He fills the basin with water, plunging soap into it and working the bar into a fragrant lather that froths the surface. Then he takes Bucky’s feet and washes them, broad hands working over the heel and arch.

Almost breathless, Bucky watches. Steve doesn’t stop at the ankle, but washes up his calves, easing the knots with his knuckles. His head is stooped down so low that Bucky cannot see his expression. Under this cover, Steve makes a choked sound in the back of his throat. 

Hot droplets scatter over the bridges of Bucky’s feet. Tears, Bucky recognizes with surprise. Steve is weeping.

“Hey,” Bucky says, “There’s no way they smell so bad you need to cry about it.”

Steve wipes his eyes with his forearm, laughing. “I thought you were dead. I know I already said it, but…”

“I’m not dead. I’m right here." Bucky pulls his feet out of the basin, the water is cold and murky with dirt anyway. "You and me, always, right?”

Steve stands up abruptly, scooping Bucky into a hug so tight he can feel his ribs creak under the pressure. At first, he’s stunned by Steve’s sheer humungous size and strength alone, but when Steve doesn’t show signs of letting up, Bucky returns the embrace and tucks his face into Steve’s shoulder. He isn’t used to being shorter than his friend, can’t get over the turned tables of their size difference.

For the record, Steve smells nearly as awful as Bucky does. 

When they pull apart, it’s Bucky who initiates the separation, leaning back regretfully. They make eye contact for a moment, inches apart. Bucky can feel Steve's breath against his lips. Steve’s head tilts, just barely, to the right.

Bucky pulls away completely. Steve’s arms are still turned out when Bucky steps away, still circled around the hollow where Bucky was.

“I’m fucking beat,” Bucky says. “Hand me my clothes?”

Mutely, Steve passes him clean clothes for bed from the trunk. And, mutely, Bucky strips out of his shirt, wincing the whole way. He expects to find the track marks in the cradle of his elbow where Zola had him hooked up to a steady IV of drugs that caused mottled bruising on the injection site. But there is none. When he shucks his pants, he expects to find the damage from the cuffs that bound him to the table, but there is none.

Bucky casts an anxious look to Steve to see if he’s noticed Bucky’s immaculate body, but Steve is looking away, too involved in his own secret thoughts. There’s a heavy blush creeping up the back of his neck and ears.

For now, Bucky decides to keep this a secret. No need to worry Steve further; not when he is already frayed to the knot.

“You take the cot,” Bucky says, standing and feeling much better than before. He’s in his own, clean-smelling pajamas and the tent is warm despite the wind whistling through the trees outside. He can smell the forest air around them, so different from the chemical musk of Zola’s bunker.

Steve shakes his head. “No, no, you take it. These are your quarters—”

“Hey,” Bucky says, suddenly. “Remember that winter when your mattress got full of mold, and we couldn’t afford another one until spring?”

Steve laughs, nodding and remembering with him. He scrubs a hand against the back of his neck. “We had to share a bed.”

“You complained a lot about it, I remember that.”

“I was bluffing,” Steve says, “It was the only winter I was warm.”

“So stop bluffing and get in the bed, Stevie,” Bucky says, leering and teasing.

Steve’s blush pinkens over the shells of his ears, but he gets under the covers. As soon as he’s in the bed, Bucky realizes he’s made a miscalculation. When they shared the narrow twin-bed of their apartment, Steve was just a wisp of a human, easily stored in the corner. Now, Steve’s body consumes most of the bed. He, too, sees the dilemma and shifts onto his side, facing away and making himself small for Bucky.

Bucky extinguishes the light and crawls in behind him, careful not to let their bodies brush. Steve’s new body holds the exact same charge as his old body, electrifying Bucky. But he stays back, stays away.

 

\--

 

That same night, Bucky wakes up to find himself pressed to his friend’s back, the long arcs of their bodies easy together as if they belong. Bucky’s arm is slung over the narrowest section of Steve’s waist. His mouth is open and slack against Steve’s shoulder blade, drooling on him in his sleep. But the worst part isn’t the drool. The worst part is that he is hard against Steve’s thigh. 

Immediately, he flinches back, horrified with himself. But before he can snatch himself away and never think about this again, Steve catches him by the wrist, trapping him there. Bucky hadn't even guessed he was  _awake._

"Don’t,” Steve whispers, a shaky edge to his quietness. Bucky can hear how badly Steve needs this. Needs Bucky.

He resists.

“We shouldn’t,” Bucky whispers back, though there’s no need to moderate their volume. No one can hear them; the wind and sleet blow outside, but Bucky can’t feel the chill through the canvas. Tucked up against Steve’s massive body, he’s completely suffused in warmth.

Steve hums in understanding, but his fingers find the pulse in the delicate divot at Bucky’s wrist. Calloused, but not rough, these fingers stroke up along his forearm. Just feeling his skin.

“We shouldn’t,” Bucky repeats, even as Steve rolls around to face him. “I want to, but—”

Facing him now, Steve rests a hand on Bucky’s hip. It's so large now that his fingers fold over the illiac crest of bone. Startled, Bucky takes up his hand and presses his against it, flattening Steve’s fingers against his own. He laughs, incredulously.

“Your hands are bigger than mine now,” Bucky marvels. “But I guess your fingers have always been long.”

Steve’s face gets a little funny over that. He leans forward again, testing the space between them, but Bucky ducks his head. Their foreheads press instead, and that’s familiar. That’s comforting.

Bucky wishes they could just stay here, suspended in time before making a decision. Somewhere between agony and ecstasy. Somewhere between apart and together.

“We shouldn’t,” he says again, but he’s believing it less now than he did before.

“Why not?” Steve exhales. His breath fans out over Bucky’s cheekbones, brushing his eyelashes. “You could have died."

"I didn't," Bucky reminds.

"I know, but...You don't feel like we might be running out of time?"

That's exactly how Bucky feels. He doesn't know how their lives shot so far ahead of him. But still, he says, “It’s not right." 

And Steve, bless him, he laughs. He kicks Bucky's feet under the covers and has the _audacity_ to laugh at him with his big broad mouth and long nose wrinkled up into a scrunch.

“Don’t you think I know what’s right?” he whispers, sliding an arm around Bucky.

He draws him closer by the waist, by the shoulder. Hustling Bucky in towards himself. And Bucky goes easy enough, willing to follow into the warm curve of his body. Steve has always known true north.

When they are pressed flush, Steve hesitates, leaning back. His eyes search Bucky’s. “Does it not feel right to you?”

Bucky swallows, dryly, making a decision. “Turn back around,” he says.

Disappointment floods Steve’s face, hardening into grim acceptance. He nods, turns around in a protective huddle away from Bucky. Oh, Steve.

Steeling himself, Bucky slides an arm underneath Steve's waist, pressing another hand to his chest, wrapping himself around him. Steve sighs, relaxes back into him.

"You're confusing me, Buck." 

Here's the thing: Bucky Barnes is brave, brazen, and brash. At least he can be, anyway. And he certainly feels so now when he presses a kiss to the back of Steve’s neck. The fine razored hairs at Steve's nape prickle Bucky’s chapped lips. He parts his mouth, skimming the skin, and exhales hotly. Steve gives a full body shudder, thighs clamping together.

They’re doing this.

Bucky’s mouth roams over Steve’s skin, teeth finding the crest of his clavicle where it presses against the edge of his shoulder. Every movement of his mouth is a delight, every shiver it elicits a slice of paradise. He mouths another kiss just under Steve’s ear, daring to catch the wet inside of his lower lip against Steve’s pulse point.

Steve takes his hand, squeezing down hard on his fingers. “Are you sure you're ready for this?” Steve, himself, sounds barely ready for this, already overwhelmed and shivery. Every muscle in his body is squeezed into a tight bulge.

Bucky nods. “I’ve been thinking about this since we were twelve,” he says, pulling on his hip to roll Steve onto his back.

He crawls atop him, extra careful with him in a way he no longer needs to be. He slots a knee between Steve’s thighs, working them apart, and stares down at him.

From this new angle, Steve is strangely beautiful. His eyes are clear and wide, so blue against the pink of his blush that has spread down over his chest. He’s so beautiful and Bucky is astounded by the revelation that he gets to _touch him,_ all that he wants.

Bucky’s heart staggers in his chest, a deer gunned down and wounded. 

A little dizzy, and feeling like a glutton at a banquet, Bucky tests the grind of their hips together. It's slow and close and perfect and they both groan in unison. Steve is several pitches louder than Bucky and he claps his hand over his friend’s mouth, snort-laughing.

“Shhh, Stevie,” he whispers against his own knuckles, flexing his hips down again because it’s just too good not to. His blood feels like it’s made of molasses, everything is so slow and hazy. “You’re gonna get us caught.”

Predictably, Steve slides his tongue between Bucky’s fingers and grins up at him like he's done something clever. Bucky wipes the saliva off on Steve’s cheek and then rubs his nose against the wet spot. Because he can. Because he can do whatever he wants, now.

Steve takes him by the hips then but doesn’t grip hard. Just holding him. Holding and feeling the roll of Bucky’s hips against his own. Every now and then, he’ll apply pressure, keeping Bucky in place when the friction is that dirty kind of sweet. He locks onto him and grinds his hips up against Bucky's, pinning him down for just one extra moment.

Their hips flushed tight like that, Bucky can feel how hard and damp Steve is against his thigh. He's blurting precome into his briefs, breath hitching at each push of the hips. An absolute mess, content to watch Bucky move above him with naked awe.

Fuck, he loves him.

And Bucky rides his thigh dry, his own thighs spread wide to accommodate him, fists balling into the sheets around Steve’s head. He uses the ridge of his hip to drive against Steve. When Steve twitches and gasps under him, Bucky chases the noise with his mouth, kissing him so hard their teeth grind through their lips.

“Bucky,” Steve says, strangled on his own pleasure. His fingertips curl into the muscles of Bucky's thighs. When they have more time, Bucky wants to feel those fingers everywhere. “Buck, I—”

Bucky rests his forehead against Steve’s, panting. “Yeah? Feels good, doesn't it? Feels..." Bucky falters, a shot of pleasure lancing through him. "You close?”

As if in pain, Steve rolls his lips in, nodding. He squeezes his eyes closed and tears prick his blonde eyelashes. Bucky kisses each eyelid but doesn’t let up on the pace of his hips. He loses the rhythm, blindly rubbing tight and hard against Steve’s thick thigh. He’s close too.

“Together, then?” he suggests. His own eyes are clenched tightly closed, but he opens them when Steve rests a hand on his cheek. 

Steve smiles and Bucky has to return it, just barely a flicker at the corner of his mouth, driven too mad by how _goddamn close_ he is.

“Together,” Steve affirms.

 

\---

 

The year is 2018, and Bucky Barnes wakes up with a start. He searches the cabin for Steve, who is on the ground, already rousing from the noise. The fire is low in the stove. The wind is a sacred hush through the pine trees. Everything is as it was when Bucky went to sleep, but now that he's awake, everything has changed.

They see each other, and when they do, Bucky smiles.

Dazedly, Steve rubs his eyes, rests a hand on the edge of Bucky’s cot. “Everything alright, Buck?” Steve asks, voice thick from sleep. 

Bucky brushes his fingertips over Steve's knuckles. He nods. “Everything’s alright, Steve.”

 

END

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, y'all. Thank you so much for sticking with me and for showing me more support than I could have ever hoped. I've loved writing this, and I love you all for reading it.
> 
> As for the series, I have the vague idea of following this up with a less-substantive (read: self-indulgently happy) epilogue. Let me know if you'd be interested, and/or keep posted for that.


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